Paper-Making
an account of paper-making from its earliest
known record down to the present time by
J.W. Butler Paper Company 1901
of making paper, of the sort familiar to us, from fibrous matter
reduced to a pulp. According to the old saying, "Time and
patience will change the mulberry leaf into satin." The ingenious,
painstaking sons of the Flowery Kingdom had been
demonstrating its truth through some centuries, when, about IS0
A.D., they discovered that the mulberry might be put to still
another use. The tree that they chose for their new manufacture
was not identical with the one upon which they fed their
silkworms, and to which they were indirectly indebted for their
softly shimmering silks, but it belonged to the same family. From
its bark they made, by a process that must have seemed to them
something akin to magic, a material which, in its developed and
improved form, has been of priceless value to the world, far
exceeding that of the rich and costly stuffs woven from the
cocoons of the silkworm. Compared with modern methods of
paper making, this primitive process, which is said to be still in
vogue in China, was fairly simple. The branches of the tree were
first boiled in lye to remove the bark. Then followed maceration in
separated into fibers. These were washed in a pan or sieve, then worked by hand into a pulp, which was spread on a
table and beaten fine with a mallet. The pulp was placed in a tub containing an infusion of rice and a root called oveni,
and thoroughly stirred to mix the materials. The sheets were formed by dipping a cc mold" made of strips of bulrushes,
confined in a frame, into the vat containing the pulp, which was taken out in a thin layer, after the method followed in
making paper by hand. After molding, the sheets were laid one above another, with strips of reeds placed between,
weights were applied, and the sheets were afterward dried in the sun.
It has been suggested that in regions where the water-plant called the conferna grows, Nature herself teaches the
method of making paper from vegetable fibers beaten to a pulp. The plant consists of slender green filaments, similar
to what is called frog-spittle. The fibers are disintegrated by the action of the water, and rise to the surface as a scum.
Driven hither and thither by the winds, tossed by the waves, and carried on resistlessly by the currents, this scum is
at last beaten into pulp and matted together by the forces whose plaything it has been. Bleached by the sun, it is
finally, in some overflow of the water, cast upon the shore to dry, as veritable sheets of paper. But if Nature taught
the process, man was slow to discover the teacher, or to learn the lesson.
When the Arabs captured the splendid city of Samarcand from the Chinese, about 704 A. D., they gained something
more than material booty, for the art of paper-making flourished there, and they carried the secret back with them to
their own towns and cities. Western Europe in turn learned it from the Arabs, through the Crusaders, who visited
Byzantium, Palestine, and Syria. The followers of the Cross, many of whom were grossly ignorant and superstitious,
went east to christianize, by conquest, the inhabitants of these ancient lands, and to wrest from the infidels the tomb
of the Savior, and found to their surprise many arts and refinements of which they had been ignorant.