Day 107: A Primer on Printing and Paper

Alright, so this won't truly be comprehensive enough to be considered a primer, but I just couldn't resist the alliteration!

I've briefly mentioned paper and book-binding before, but now I'm going to talk about paper and printing

Lesson 108: Paper can be made from any vegetative natural fibre.

When I was talking about scrolls and codexes, I mentioned that they used to make "paper" called vellum, which was treated calf skin. That's what they used for the longest time in book-making.

Paper as we know it was invented in the 2nd century in China, where they used it mostly for packaging. They also started using it for many of the purposes we use paper today; they made toilet paper, paper money, and even printed books. Arab traders learned the process in the 8th century and brought it home. They built paper-mills, made thicker pages and used the paper to make much lighter codices with silk covers able to do away with the heavy covers and clasps that had been needed to keep the vellum books from becoming wedges.

In the 11th century, the process finally made it to Europe.

In the beginning, the Chinese used hemp, and bark from the paper mulberry. In Europe, they used hemp and linen rags. Eventually cotton caught on too. It wasn't until the 19th century that they started using wood pulp like we do today. But where the rag paper was stable and lasted a long time, wood pulp paper is by default acidic and degrades quite badly.

But really, paper can be made of any cellulose, any natural vegetative fibre. You could make paper from the vegetable peelings you threw out while making dinner, or the grass trimmings from mowing the lawn. Heck! There's one company that makes notebooks out of paper using elephant poop as the source of vegetative fibre. The possibilities are endless!

Another fun fact: the paper they made for printing (I can't speak for modern processes) was *not* vegetarian friendly. Paper that had just been made, so called "fresh leaf", would actually wind up absorbing too much ink to print correctly. Kind of like trying to write with a sharpie on toilet paper; the ink bleeds out and becomes a formless jumble.

Instead, they'd treat the fresh leaf with gelatin so the ink would rest on the surface instead of leaking out all over the place.

So that's one more thing for the vegetarians: no Jell-O, Oreos or printed books.

That's harsh, man!

Day 103: When is a book not a book?

Books have not always looked like books.

But we knew that, right?

We knew that in Egypt, their stories were written down on walls and in scrolls of papyrus with pictograms. Ancient civilizations wrote on clay and stone tablets, or in wax on wooden tablets. Eventually they wrote on some form of "paper", though maybe not the pulpy kind we use today. They wrote on vellum, which was paper but made of calf skin. They wrote on paper made of rags.

Books have looked like pillars. Books have looked like walls. Books have looked like tapestries. Books have looked like scrolls.

And finally, books started looking like books. That's the codex form of books. But that form didn't really start showing up until the 2nd century and didn't really catch on until the 5th century.

But how did we go from spooling whole books on scrolls and having to scroll through the whole thing to find what we're looking for to these bound piles of paper that we can open to any point? What other forms could books have taken?

Lesson 104: In Burma, they created "Palm Books".

Turns out they did them in other places too, but today in class we got to see some Burmese Palm Books.

Basically they'd take palm leaves and cut the writing into them, then dry them and rub ink on them to dye the cuts. Each leaf would be numbered and they'd be bound between wooden boards. The string binding it all together was left long enough that it would wrap around the book holding it closed. To read it, you'd untie it and the pages open by fanning out.

They're really beautiful.

There are just so many interesting little anecdotes and entrancing particulates of information in the history of books and bookbinding....

Books used to need straps and clasps to hold them closed because vellum would swell when it got humid and deform the book into a wedge; unless a clasp was keeping it boxy and rectangular.

Paper as we now know it was developed in China and used by Arabs in the 8th century and didn't catch on in Europe until later.

Independent of all of this, Meso-Americans made codex style books where they whitewashed the pages before writing on them.

This class just speaks so much to my nature as an encyclopedia of useless knowledge!