Papermaking: The Process

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Eirny

Making paper in Europe used rags as a raw material. Rag pickers bought and sold used clothing and other fabric until it was no longer suitable for anything but making paper.

Paper pulp was made using rags. The mills would cut rags into small pieces, at the same time removing any buttons, hard seams, badly stained pieces etc… These little pieces would then be piled in a dark corner, soaked with water and allowed to rett (rot) for a couple of weeks. Fungus growing on them was a sign of good retting.

The next step was to take these retted rags and put them into a stamper. This was a series of very large wooden hammers powered by a water mill. It pounded the rags in water to pulverize the rags into individual fibers. The process essentially “unmade” fabric by separating the fibers from the spun yarn and thread.

The pulp was then added to a large vat and diluted so that the final concentration was probably about 95 percent water and 5 percent fiber. The vatman would then use a large frame with a large number of parallel wires strung across it, lower it into the pulp and pull out a screen load of what will become paper. The fiber in the pulp lays flat upon the screen creating a thin layer of pulp.

After pulling the screen the vatman shook it to consolidate the fibers in the pulp and passed the frame to a coucher who then flipped the frame onto a layer of damp wool or felt. The coucher then placed another piece of felt on top of the very fragile sheet and passed the frame back to the vatman who repeated the process. This continued until a stack of alternating pulp and felts as large as could fit into the press was made. This stack is called a post.

Paper in the post was extremely fragile until it was pressed. An apprentice would move the post to the press and apply pressure to the stack using a long wooden handle in a paper press. Once the excess water was pressed out of the post, the individual sheets of paper could be hung to dry on ropes, hung in groups on ropes, or placed on drying cloths.

English: Papermaking by hand. Woodcut. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

16^th Century Vatman image courtesy of British Association of Paper Historians (ca. 1588). The stamper or hammer mill used to pulp rags can be seen in the upper left of the image. The paper press is located in the upper right of the image. Note the holes in the wooden screw through which a wooden handle was placed to press the wet paper. Other images show this handle to be about 3-4 feet long enabling substantial pressure to be applied to the paper. The vatman can be seen lifting a mould from the pulp vat. The mould includes a deckle frame which is set on top of the mould to consolidate the paper edge. In the lower left an apprentice is carrying a pressed stack of paper to be dried. If you look out the windows you can see the water wheels that are used to drive the automated processes, like the stampers.

Next Time: Making Paper at Home

Papermaking: A Brief History

Posted on June 9, 2014 by Eirny

The name ‘paper’ comes from the original source of paper, the papyrus plant. Renaissance European paper is made of pulped cellulose fibers such as cotton and flax. According to tradition (but not documentable), paper was first made in China about AD 105 by Ts’ai Lun.

An image, describing five major steps in ancient Chinese papermaking process. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Paper making is generally recognized as diffusing throughout Europe from the Arabic countries. Arabs in turn acquired the knowledge of paper making in the area of Samarkan located in modern day Uzbekistan. They set up paper mills in Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and later in Morocco, Spain and Sicily. Although the Samarkan region grew cotton and used it for making paper, the Arabs generally lacked fresh fibres. Consequently the Arabian paper making tradition was based almost entirely on rags. The breaker mills employed in the Arabic paper making process produced an inferior pulp. But, by using this method, with screens made of reeds, thin sheets of paper could be made with a good quality. These sheets were coated with starch paste as a sizing. This gave Arabian paper its good writing properties and fine appearance.

One of the better documented paper making endeavors in Europe was that of the Nuremberg councilor Ulmann Stromer (Stromeir). In the late 14^th century Stromer employed skilled workers from Italy to transform the ‘Gleismühle’ (flour mill ) by the gates of his home town into a paper mill. The dates noted in his diary, 24 June 1390 (start of work on the waterwheel) and 7 and 11 August 1390 (oaths sworn by his Nuremberg foremen), are the first documented records of papermaking in Germany. A facsimile of these diary pages is on display at the Deutsches Museum of Science and Technology in Munich.

The wording of Stromer’s diary entries reinforce the impression that papermaking was a largely unknown and secret art, consistent with practices of secrecy by the Guild system in Europe. Stromer had to convince the immigrant Italians to teach him the necessary papermaking secrets. In addition, he had to overcome many technical difficulties. Stromer’s mill – illustrated in the world chronicle of Hartmann Schedel in 1493 – was initially designed with two waterwheels, 18 stamping hammers (i.e. six holes) and 12 workers using one or two vats.

Italian papermakers had improved the Arabic methods by developing:

the use of water power
the stamping mill (derived from the stampers and milling machines used in textile handicrafts)
the mould made of wire mesh (as a result of progress in wire production), which triggered the introduction of couching on felt
the paper press (screw press) with slides for feeding in the material
drying the sheets on ropes
dip sizing

Handmade paper in the western tradition requires the work of three professionals. First the Vat man scoops the pulp from the vat containing a mixture of water and pulp and forms a piece of paper on the mould. Next the Coucher transfers the wet sheet of pulp to a damp felt to be pressed and give the paper a particular surface. Finally, the Layer removes the wet sheets from the felts and stacks them for further pressing and drawing. The layer is also responsible for removing defective sheets.

Watermarks are created by sewing a formed wire into the mesh of the paper mould, creating a slightly thinner layer that reveals the shape of the watermark when held up to the light. Watermarks were used to identify the paper maker and were first in the forms of circles, crosses and stars and other religious symbols relevant in the 13th century AD.

Next Time – Papermaking: The Process

Plague Remedy of Nostradamus

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Eirny

Have you ever thought about what sort of remedies and preventative measures were considered effective against the plague? A few years ago my husband did a bunch of research on this topic, and here are some of the results.

Nostradamus is modernly best known as a prognosticator – a person who has predicted major political and physical events. However, he was first known as an alchemist, apothecary and physician due in large part to his association with Louis Serre. Although Nostradamus is credited with a recipe for a cure for the plague, it’s quite likely that the “cure” was part of Serre’s work. Part 1 Chapter VIII of Nostradamus’ Traite des fardemens et des confitures, 1555, 1556, 1557 — gives his plague remedy (formatting added for clarity):

“To make the basis for a perfectly good and excellent aromatic powder whose perfume is not strange, but confers an agreeable and long-lasting sweetness, though it can only be prepared once a year: Take one ounce of the sawdust or shavings of cypress-wood, as green as you can find, six ounces of Florentine violet-root, three ounces of cloves, three drams of sweet calamus, and six drams of aloes-wood.

Reduce the whole to powder before it spoils.

Next, take three or four hundred in-folded red roses, fresh and perfectly clean, and gathered before dewfall.

Pound them vigorously in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle.

When you are half through pounding them, add to them the above mentioned powder and immediately pound it all vigorously, while sprinkling on it a little rose-juice.
When everything is well mixed together, form it into little flat lozenges, as you would pills, and let them dry in the shade, for they will smell good.
And note that from this mixture may also be made aromatic soaps, cypress powder, violet root powder, aromatic balls, perfumes, ‘Cyprus birds’ and perfumed waters.
And in order to make the mixture even more excellent, add as much musk and ambergris as you either can or wish.

If these two are added I do not doubt that you will produce a superbly pleasant perfume. Pulverize the said musk and ambergris, dissolving it with rose-juice, then mix it in and dry in the shade.

Quite apart from the goodness and scent that this mixture lends to the items and mixtures mentioned above, you only have to keep it in the mouth a little to make your breath smell wonderful all day…

And in time of Plague, keep it often in the mouth, for there is no smell better for keeping away the bad and pestiferous air.”

My Interpretation:

1 part green cedar sawdust (cypress was not available to me except in dried form)

6 parts Orris root (Florentine violet root)

3 parts cloves

¼ parts calamus

½ part aloes

6 roses

Rose water as needed

All of the first five ingredients were crushed together to form a powder. As I did not have a wooden pestle, I used a marble pestle and ground the ingredients finely. The roses were crushed to a powder and the aromatic mixture was added. Next rose water was added to form a paste. The paste was formed into lozenges and dried.

The lozenges should be held in the mouth and NOT chewed or sucked. Since the ingredients were NOT made of known food safe products I advise AGAINST putting the lozenges in your mouth.

This was an interesting experiment in Medieval alchemy. The lozenges actually taste fairly nasty to most people because of the modern association of the rose scent with soap. They do smell good though, and smell was believed in Medieval times to keep away the bad essences that cause illness.

Picture of a potpourri (Photo credit: Wikipedia)