Julia Herdman Books: Love Letters

This month’s theme is Love Letters, but before you can write a letter, you need paper.

As England moved into the 18^th Century most of the paper being used was French, German or Dutch. There were a few paper mills dotted around the kingdom and one in Edinburgh by the mid century and of course, all the paper had to be made by hand.

In 1709 Britain invited Europeans to settle in its American colonies but German arrivals at London were far greater than shipping could take so some returned to Germany but others were relocated, mainly in Ireland but others stayed in England. One such was a man called Isaac Tipps who decided to settle on the Isle of Wight in Hampshire. He is recorded as a paper maker when he married Christian Rutter in 1711. It turned out that the Isle of Wight was not a particularly good location and the mill enjoyed only a brief life but local historians think that it provided coarse wrapping paper for local trades.

Whatever its quality paper is a fibrous mat made by mixing fibres with water, colour or bleach to make a suspension, when the water is drained away the fibres are pressed and dried to make a flexible bonded sheet. Any fibres will do, plant fibres were first used by the Ancient Egyptians to make papyrus but by the middle ages the European paper industry was based on the shredding of rags or other waste textile material. The rags were sorted and cut by women then boiled in open tanks using wood ash as a source of alkali to break the fibres down. The resulting grey slush was sorted and washed to shallow tanks or stone troughs to clean it then hammered with iron shod stamping hammers, similar to the type used for fulling cloth. The longer the fibres were hammered the finer the resulting paper.

Sorting the rags

Hammering the fibres

Making the sheets

Hanging the sheets to dry

As the 18^th century progressed the production and use of paper in Britain gradually increased as higher rates of duty reduced imports. The British paper industry was able to rise to the challenge with the help of the introduction of a rag- machine known as a ‘Hollander’, invented in Netherlands sometime before 1670; it replaced the stamping mills that had previously been used for the breaking down of the rags and beating of the pulp.

John Baskerville, Printer

The second was the creation of a woven mould John Baskerville, a Birmingham printer, who is more widely known for his Bakerville typeface these days than his printing. He wanted to improve the quality of his printing so he collaborated with James Whatman the Elder and developed a woven wire fabric to strain the fibres on, thus producing the first woven paper in 1757.

John Dickinson, Papermaker

The transition from hanging each separate sheet out to dry to creating a continuous roll began in 1809 when John Dickinson patented a machine where a wire-cloth covered cylinder revolved in the pulp suspension. The water drained away through the centre of the cylinder and a continuous layer of pulp was laid onto a felt covered roller (later replaced by a continuous felt passing round a roller) so that the sheets could be made to any length and cut to any size. Backed by George Longman, whose family controlled the Longman publishing firm, he established a number of paper mills in the south of England taking advantage of water for power and canals for transportation of his wears. Dickinson brands are still available today - Basildon Bond and Black and Red accounts books.

Production was further enhanced in 1821 when T B Crompton patented a method of drying the paper continuously; using a woven fabric to hold the sheet against steam heated drying cylinders.

In 1850, Dickenson’s company started mechanical envelope manufacturing, with gummed envelopes for the first time and they pioneered the production of window envelopes in 1929.

In America, Thomas Gilpin opened a mill in Brandywine, Maryland using the cylinder paper machine in 1817. This was the first machine paper mill in the US. This mill operated from 1809 to 1828.

Today paper is still made by hand for specialist purposes and as lovely gift wrapping.