Brief History of Papermaking

The term ‘Paper’ derived from the Greek and Latin words ‘Papuros’ and ‘Papyrus’. However, the true ‘Paper’ was defined as a substance made in the form of thin sheets or leaves from rags, straw, bark, wood, or other fibrous material, for various uses.The history of the craft of papermaking depicted in many ways on the story of civilisation. The age of papers, fibres and types of making can be distinguished and identified by scientific study. From fragments of paper and its watermark, historians have been able to piece together a pattern of development and give us an in-depth knowledge as well as the continuity in evolution.

Prehistoric man probably did not think about writing. Various acoustic and optical devices such as signal horns, drums, smoke-and-fire signals and so forth were sufficed for their communication needs. However, as man emerged from his primitive state, felt a need for recording experiences in a permanent form. It is that the earliest examples of human attempts to scratch, draw or paint highly naturalistic or schematic pictures of animals or some geometric patterns on cave walls were actually preliminary stage of writing. Long after that, came the more workable materials such as wood, metal, stone, ceramics, leaves, barks, cloth, papyrus, and parchment as basic surfaces, fulfilling its individual requirements through the centuries.The earliest actual evidence of writing in China is the incised divination bones discovered in Hunan Province in 1400-1300B.C. These writings upon bones consist of short sentences addressed to the spirits. And that long, narrow form of the bones influenced and suggested the method of Chinese calligraphy, vertical in form, from top to bottom. This followed by the period of Confucius (551 – 478B.C.), scholars wrote on strips of bamboo with a paint-like pigment held on the points of wooden sticks or reeds and also written from top to bottom. At this time, silk was also used as a material for writing but was too expensive for general use. Therefore, in the official Han Catalogue, more manuscripts and records were written on wood than on silk.

Later in 250B.C., a Chinese savant, Mêng T’ien, invented the camel’s hairbrush, an innovation that not only revolutionised the writing of Chinese characters, but was instrumental in the rapid development of calligraphy. Archaic Chinese scholars who used the camel’s hairbrush brought forth the exigency for a writing substance that was cheaper and more practical than woven textile. It was this urgent need for a totally new writing surface that inspired the Chinese eunuch Ts’ai Lun in 105A.D. to proclaim his invention of true paper – a thin, felted material formed on flat, porous moulds from softened vegetable fibre after long period of soaking in water (macerated). Fan Yeh was the first scholar to record the invention of papermaking by Ts’ai Lun. Papermaking consisted of a vatman[1], coucher[2] and layman[3] performing their respective duties. Paper at that time was made from mulberry and other barks, fish nets, cotton, linen, wool, hemp, and rags, and the types of sizing agent[4] evolved from pastes made from grains, gypsum[5], gelatine extracted from lichen[6], and to starch flour. The ancient papermaking process comprised the following basic steps:

A) The classification of true paper started with macerated fibres intermixed with water (pulp) and added sizing agent.

B) By the use of a sieve-like screen, the fibres were lifted from the water in the form of a thin stratum.

C) A sheet of matted fibre upon the screen’s surface was form upon drainage of the water through the small openings of the screen. This thin layer of intertwined fibre is paper.

D) Newly formed sheets were then mounted on heated wall for drying.

Paper continued to be hand-made for centuries until the beginning of the 1800 A.D., primitive methods dominated by the principle of the papermaking machine invented in 1798 A.D. by Nicolas Louis Robert and constructed by M. Alleward in France. The principle was partially influenced by the invention of mechanised beater, ‘a Hollander’, in Netherlands, to aid in macerating the fibres mechanically in 1680A.D. Shortly, Henry Fourdrinier created and patented, ‘Fourdrinier’[7] machine on 24 July 1806A.D. in order to cater the high demand. Watermarking[8] was introduced into machine-made papers to identify mould sizes, detect forgery and or mainly as trademarks of the papermakers, after been used in hand-made papers for 500 years by the French and German.Today, machine-made papers are manufactured in their millions and billions for industrial and commercial uses. On the whole, machine-made paper is favoured for general use because it is uniform, cheap and easily available. Despite the advancement in information technology, paper is still indispensable in our daily lives. The development of papermaking is still speeding and at the end of each century questions on how paperless method and ancient craft continue to engage each other.

[1] A vatman is a skilled worker who prepares the pulp in the vat and scoops the prepared fibres using the mould to form sheets.
‍[2] A coucher receives the loaded mould and replaces the formed sheets on top of each sheet in a stack.
‍[3] A layman presses the stack of newly formed sheets and mounts each sheet onto drying board or heated wall.
‍[4] Adhering solution to strengthen the formed sheet.
‍[5] Soft white mineral like chalk that is found naturally and is used in making Plaster-of-Paris.
‍[6] A very small grey or yellow plant that spreads over the rocks, walls and trees and does not have any flowers.
‍[7] A machine with a number of moulds hooked together to form one long mould. A platform to hold the long mould that could still slide along backwards or forwards, A vessel containing fibres is to flow upon the mould through holes, each provided with one or two registers to limit the mark of the flow of fibres. A set of cylinders, upon which is passed had felt web for lifting the paper sheets and final pressing.
‍[8] Embossed with representative symbols and letters from the pre-designed mould.