We Didn't Always Get Paper From Trees - Historical Writing Series Part 3

I've got with me Brian Allison and we've been talking about all sorts of writing things pens inks today paper let's talk about the paper and what it was like in the 18th century 19th century absolutely and this is the the 3rd of the triumvirate with no need to write any paper ink and then we've covered the quill and the ink well now we're going to be talking about the paper and a paper really is relatively recent Western development parchment was originally what was used by the 18th century only see parchment for formal documents and it still is treated animal skin so I'm not going to really go into that too much but something like the Declaration of Independence and military commission days might be printed or written on parchment super-expensive exactly by Derek durable I mean it's like what I said in it's still you know there's still readable today it's almost indestructible by the 14th 15th century that's when paper really starts coming into England and France and the first type is this type here they're Berlin this is some laid paper now this is all these terms all have to do with them you can take a look at that right it all has to do with them the manufacture of the paper laid paper is made on a series of wires they're called chains or ladders sometimes and the slurry the pulp that you make paper out of is laid across that so when you dunk it into the bath and pull it back up it leaves the impressions of those chains and wires right and if we look closely we can see all these lines on this and look at it carefully you'll see a series of little lines and then the chains it you can actually see the impression of molding of them now that was the way to make paper really from the 14th century right up to the end of the 18th almost to the dot so if you're writing you want to get your time period right first thing is going to give you away is if you write on a forgot a paper don't know it because laid paper is the only thing available right you know if I have any period books they're all printed with labor Eve well into the 19th century late paper any of the documents and we've got a document here that's from 1797 and they hold that up to the light you can see this is pretty finely chained it is and it's got a watermark that's in the well in the woven into the right B and that's a watermark is called that because it's actually in the screen and as it's impressed in the paper when you pull it out of the water bath with the slurry so it leaves that watermark all paper had a watermark going back to the 1500s so don't worry you have modern watermarks that look modern but that's a period practice too so that's that's the paper makers signature basically on there so that is definitely done at the time right so basically laid paper is where we start out so what's modern paper modern paper is called wove paper and you can see the difference you hold it up to the light there's no chains there's no letters there's the watermark exactly this starts out actually in the late 18th century with an English paper maker who develops a screen that has such fine holes in it that it doesn't leave an impression on the finished paper and in fact you see one but it does look like the woven cloth so they call it wove paper the first person to use it was Jay John Baskerville who printed a book on this row of paper in 1757 but it was so expensive that only printers used it for the longest time after the turn of the 19th century technology came along a pair of Frenchman invents a mass-produced paper milling machine and wove paper suddenly explodes so in 1807 or 8 you start seeing it in the United States by 1810 it's gaining and by the 1840s it's pretty much taken over from laid paper now that being said laid and wove were used side by side right up to the end of the 19th century but after it became popular after about 18 20 or so wove papers well more popular than the old lade paper is and really kind of takes over as the premier writing surface what about the idea of the cost of paper today we buy giant reams of paper for nearly nothing exactly and at the time paper was coming down but it was so expensive keep in mind this is not made with wood pulp one of the reasons modern papers have cheap we cut down trees to do this and as sad as that is that does make for cheap paper their stuff was much finer in quality and it used a different manufacturing process they used linen rags in fact we like to brag about being green today and recycling they would do the same thing when a shirt or a shift wore out you sold it to the rag man took it down to the paper mill and sold it to him and that man turned it into slurry for paper so you could literally you know be writing on your farmer shirt you know the scene afterward but that is an expensive process takes a long time to do and it makes the paper or consequently more expensive so when you bought paper in those days you want to make sure you get the most out of it so for example right here you brought along this wonderful little bill which was for some kind of town yeah I think two pounds to Shelley but what's fascinating about it is look how small it is this started off life as a much larger sheet of paper and it was cut to a much smaller piece because they don't need that much they're just trying to get the this is a receipt they're just trying to get the most information on there and get it back into the hands of the guy who needs it so if you don't need a full sheet you'll cut it down you old shape it to match and you'll try to save as much as possible because this can be very expensive so they're not wasting the paper they're not wasting the they used clothing everything gets reused that's a great story so you know they have these papers it turns out that there were some sometimes at different times paper preps they have it today we'd get out the paper what's ready to be used in the 18th century when the 18th century paper was often as good as the person who made it she looks like the coil is just like the inks so you do get complaints in people talking about the poor quality of their paper and the ink is feathering or running and that's the thing where bleeds into the paper or that it's so greasy that you can't write on it it's just beating them so there were tricks to get around that you could still use them today way around that is use some of this gum sandwich powder and the best way to use it is to crush it very fine put it in a little tiny ball of coffee yeah and then just pounce it all over the paper that's the that's the the process called pouncing and you pounce it all over the paper rub it in real good and what that does is it tightens up and slick ins all the fibers of the paper and that makes it easier to write on you can do that with greasy paper as well another way to do it is burnishing you could take a bone folder and burnish it real hard and it accomplishes the same process so these are ways of compressing the fibers of the paper to make it hold the ink a little better make it the ink run easier and that was a more common problem in the 18th century than today today for using modern commercial paper it's it's got manufactured with tolerances at the factory so it shouldn't give you that problem but if you do in the odd chance encounter that problem just use the 18th century solution and pass the paper let's talk about paper sizes today we use eight and a half by 11 sheets of paper that's how it comes sometimes we get laid legal size in Europe they use different sizes what about in 18th century exactly and this all comes down to even today what was the size of the mass to a piece of paper coming out of the mill they made him a huge sheets and they cut them down the size didn't want to waste exactly so as it turns out when you cut them down into the smallest quadrant basically that big sheet you get a sheet about 8 by 10 inches and that's the standard that you often see in the in short notes and what they call billets in those days little tiny informal documents there on a paper just roughly smaller than a modern piece of eight and a half of my 11 American North American paper this can easily be cut down to the size and 8 by 10 or there abouts and you can use it that way that's convenient because they can you can buy this in office stores buy the reams still with the laid finished online yards the problem is most formal correspondence wasn't written on this kind of paper okay this is too small military documents bills one they're often in a it's the same process the one size up this is a more legal size document right here this is a that you brought in a beautiful document here which is for the Brigantine Hannah a bill for her outfitting at a port 1797 there you can see the size bigger than this one but you can also see it's a little narrower now we're on longer so this is probably around 8 by 13 or there abouts and that is their version of legal size you see this size a lot in military documents business transaction legal documents or a lot of both size and I think that's where the term comes from because they used it for so long so that's the next size up not can you get you can still get right stationery stores the problem is formal correspondence was usually written on what they call by folium paper and that's like this looks like the eight and a half by 11 until I actually open it up it's actually a booklet and so what you want to do here is you start out with a page probably a roughly equivalent of the modern 11 by 17 and then fold it in half and what you would do with this is you'd write your intro you're right here in the body of the paper out of your letter bow to your letter signature goes here back page is blank and that way you fold that up and that's the outside of your envelope when you're done so most formal letters and I mean letters written to loved ones letters written to important people had to be on this format that can be tricky because it's hard to find letter that size the letter stock that size but there is a quick go around for people who want to just get started and looking for a relatively cheap version go to under your heart your art store or a craft store and a lot of times they'll have a charcoal paper charcoal paper is a Lhari paper art paper you want to look for charcoal because charcoal is laid finish it's also relatively light it's writing writing weight basically and it comes in all sorts of sizes including about it I guess this one's about oh it's close to 11 by 17 but you can cut that down to size fold that over and there you go it's time to make your own exactly a pad of maybe 25 30 for a relatively cheap amount of money and so that's a good way to get started if you want to get into this right and you don't want to go to the trouble of ordering it special and have the mill cut it and everything like that so there's ways around it there's ways to replicate the look one other tip um if you're looking for paper remember they're paper was linen content almost impossible to find today I did the math one time I actually found a mill in France that still makes it linen content rag paper it would have cost almost as much as the payment of a house to even import five sheets so I just said forget that I'm glad to know it's out there but that's for professional it's not made what you can do though is get the equivalent cotton content the more cotton that's in it the more expensive it's going to be but you can get it anywhere from 25 to 100% and if you get a 100% cotton it is almost as close as you're going to see to act original eighteenth-century paper that I've handled in my in my career they didn't just work on on blank sheets right exactly letters aren't the only part of writing with this everything was recorded in these sure I like to tell the kids that you know when I do these workshops that you may think of Shakespeare's works or something like um Victor Hugo's lateness a table all that was recorded on paper with a quill pen originally and they start off with little things like this of blank books if you want to do journaling if you want to keep notes of things almost everybody had a little blank book they carry in their pocket right good today exactly no I do we have an iPhone today but back in the old days that was their phone was this little book they called them waste books because a lot of times the cheap ones that they sold the stationers were cut down from waste paper and they were meant to be wasted so little cheap books like it now this one's much nicer than a cheap book but something like this is perfect for journaling and things like that so rather marvel paper you know so all of these would be how the records were kept so if you're bored a ship for example you're gonna be keeping log books you're gonna keep keeping navigational journals you're going to be keeping medical journals all that's being kept in these little blank books that were made in in these book binder shops sold to the public and Kerry to see and here's one that's a commonplace book the commonplace bloqueo those were kept by great minds basically so you could organize your thoughts so again you've got them where they've they've got tables of contents and you've got the ABCD all that's designed for you to find if you had a passage of quote something like that you could organize it according to your own system right and then go looking and go back and find where it's at instead of going I think it's in here someplace oh yeah yeah so so fascinating so many great little nuances with paper who would have thought paper was such a complicated little process but it's so much different today we take paper for granted it was very very important in the 18th century so thank you Brian so much thank you really amazing topic we've both covered quills and ink and this is paper you can take this link to see a playlist of these videos and thank you guys so much for watching

Channel: Townsends

Views: 216,078

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking, paper, writing, brian alllison, ink, quill, writing with ink, mansker's station

Id: 5fks4Vnu8P0

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 31 2019