Nice shout out for paper. When Europe moved from making parchment and vellum out of calf and sheep hides, they moved on to making paper out of linen and flax rags. Rag pickers went through towns looking for rags and old clothing (your tattered underwear often ended up at the paper mill).
It was a laborious and long process that involved t…
Nice shout out for paper. When Europe moved from making parchment and vellum out of calf and sheep hides, they moved on to making paper out of linen and flax rags. Rag pickers went through towns looking for rags and old clothing (your tattered underwear often ended up at the paper mill).
It was a laborious and long process that involved throwing the rags in vats of a boiling water stew (cow dung and buttermilk were a part of the solution). Because white paper was desired, and bleach did not exist, the dark rags were spread in the sunlight on fields of grass. I have often wondered what it might look like to see vast amounts of rags bleaching in the sunlight.
After a season in sun, the rags were left in large tanks to ferment, and beaten to a pulp with copious amounts of water. Then the paper had to be formed and sized. But the process and the materials (flax and linen) meant the paper lived "forever," and did not easily rip. I bought a 18th century Italian opera book and the paper is pristine, strong, and still quite white.
Paper-making radically changed in the 19th century. Europe was running out of linen and flax rags. The French started making paper out of wood pulp—a practice that soon spread to the rest of the continent and America.
But this 19th century change did not bode well for the quality of paper. Wood pulp fibers, the new source of material used to make paper, are shorter than linen fibers which means the paper is acidic and fragile. Chemical compounds and processes used in modern paper-making cause paper to discolor, weaken, and become more brittle over time.
Pulp fiction books were made out of the cheapest wood pulp paper (hence their name), and as the owner of several of these books, it is only a matter of time before the paper completely disintegrates. The pages are brown, thin, and fragile.
Fortunately, mills and countries are now using other materials to make stronger and better papers. For example, it can be made from hemp, cotton, mulberry, banana trees, and bamboo, all superior to wood pulp.
Well, I'm sure this is more than you wanted to know about paper making!
If anyone here ever has the opportunity/time/means to take a papermaking course, I highly recommend it. You can do something with those old clothes you don't really want to use as rags, and end up with fantastic handmade paper for whatever use you want. And the end product lasts forever (or close enough—I have some beautiful paper I made 40 years ago and it hasn't aged at all).
Love all this — what I want to know is if it's true that vellum was portrait-sized (taller than wide) because most animal hides are oblong and when they moved to making paper they just kept the orientation.
Sorry, don’t know the answer to your question. But I do know sometimes it would take a whole herd to get enough “pages” on which to write a book. So the question became, do you want to feed your family or write a book? Paper was godsend…
Nice shout out for paper. When Europe moved from making parchment and vellum out of calf and sheep hides, they moved on to making paper out of linen and flax rags. Rag pickers went through towns looking for rags and old clothing (your tattered underwear often ended up at the paper mill).
It was a laborious and long process that involved throwing the rags in vats of a boiling water stew (cow dung and buttermilk were a part of the solution). Because white paper was desired, and bleach did not exist, the dark rags were spread in the sunlight on fields of grass. I have often wondered what it might look like to see vast amounts of rags bleaching in the sunlight.
After a season in sun, the rags were left in large tanks to ferment, and beaten to a pulp with copious amounts of water. Then the paper had to be formed and sized. But the process and the materials (flax and linen) meant the paper lived "forever," and did not easily rip. I bought a 18th century Italian opera book and the paper is pristine, strong, and still quite white.
Paper-making radically changed in the 19th century. Europe was running out of linen and flax rags. The French started making paper out of wood pulp—a practice that soon spread to the rest of the continent and America.
But this 19th century change did not bode well for the quality of paper. Wood pulp fibers, the new source of material used to make paper, are shorter than linen fibers which means the paper is acidic and fragile. Chemical compounds and processes used in modern paper-making cause paper to discolor, weaken, and become more brittle over time.
Pulp fiction books were made out of the cheapest wood pulp paper (hence their name), and as the owner of several of these books, it is only a matter of time before the paper completely disintegrates. The pages are brown, thin, and fragile.
Fortunately, mills and countries are now using other materials to make stronger and better papers. For example, it can be made from hemp, cotton, mulberry, banana trees, and bamboo, all superior to wood pulp.
Well, I'm sure this is more than you wanted to know about paper making!
If anyone here ever has the opportunity/time/means to take a papermaking course, I highly recommend it. You can do something with those old clothes you don't really want to use as rags, and end up with fantastic handmade paper for whatever use you want. And the end product lasts forever (or close enough—I have some beautiful paper I made 40 years ago and it hasn't aged at all).
Love all this — what I want to know is if it's true that vellum was portrait-sized (taller than wide) because most animal hides are oblong and when they moved to making paper they just kept the orientation.
Sorry, don’t know the answer to your question. But I do know sometimes it would take a whole herd to get enough “pages” on which to write a book. So the question became, do you want to feed your family or write a book? Paper was godsend…
this is exactly what i wanted to know about paper making - thank you :)
I agree. this was great!