Part 10
The modern printer who fairly appreciates the difficulties of printing colors in register, and the force required to secure a good impression from a large, flat surface, may be puzzled by the neatness of this early printing. His experience tells him that these designs should have been printed upon strong and accurately adjusted presses, and from large surfaces, in sections or forms of two or more square feet. But the method of the Italian printers was quite different; the designs were engraved on many pieces of wood of small size, made to fit each other with accuracy, and each piece was separately inked and struck by hand, or by a mallet, on the fabric. A careful workman could readily connect the different impressions of different blocks, keeping the colors in true register, and could pursue the pattern in a neat manner over any surface, however large. The work was tedious, but not more so than that of finishing, or gilding by hand tools, in ornamental bookbinding, which is now done by a similar method. Slow as it may seem when compared with the rapidity of modern [p128] calico-printing, it was an improvement on all methods then known, and much quicker and more exact than any form of stenciling or hand-painting.
The fragment adjudged by Weigel the oldest of the ten specimens illustrated in the book, is a bit of red silk, woven and printed during the last ten years of the twelfth century. He says that we must search for its origin where silk fabrics were most extensively manufactured; that it must have been made by Moorish artisans of Almeria, Grenada and Seville in Southern Spain, or by Saracens in Sicily in the rich manufacturing cities of Palermo[53] and Messina. Printed fabrics of silk, cotton, linen, and woolen stuffs were subsequently made in Lucca, in Genoa, and the free cities of Northern Italy.
The art of staining cloth with colors is older than history. Homer writes about the magnificent colored cloths of Sidon; Herodotus mentions the garments of the people of Caucasus, which he says were covered with figures of animals; Pliny describes the decorated linens of the old Egyptians.[54] The Spanish invaders of Mexico brought back statements that all the people of the New World were clothed in cotton cloths [p129] of brilliant colors, which Stephens says were certainly printed. Cook, the discoverer of islands in the Pacific, says that the Polynesians beautified their garments by a method of stamping. It is not even necessary to attribute the early Italian practice of printing upon woven fabrics to the Saracens of Sicily; the Italian practice may have been the revival of a disused but unforgotten Roman art—a revival made possible through the growth of commerce and manufactures.
There is no connecting link between the Italian hand-stamps of the thirteenth and the Venetian playing cards of the fifteenth century. There are no Italian prints of images, and no Italian block-books, which can be attributed to this period. Papillon, the author of a treatise on engraving, is the only person who has attempted to supply this deficiency in the record. He gives a description of eight large prints, which he thinks were made at Ravenna, in the year 1286, by a twin brother and sister, known as the two Cunios:
When I was a young man, and employed by my father almost every week-day in different places, to paste or arrange our papers for the hanging of rooms, it happened that, in 1719 or 1720, I was sent to the village of Bagneux, near Mount Rouge, to a Mr. De Greder, a Swiss captain, who there possessed a very pretty house. After I had papered a closet for him, he employed me to paste certain papers in imitation of mosaic upon the shelves of his library. One day after dinner, he found me reading in one of his books, and was, in consequence, induced to show me two or three very ancient volumes which had been lent to him by a Swiss officer, one of his friends, that he might examine them at his leisure. We conversed together about the prints contained in them, and concerning the antiquity of engraving on wood. I will now give the description of these ancient volumes, such as I wrote in his presence, and as he had the goodness to dictate to me: “Upon a cartouche, or frontispiece, decorated with fanciful ornaments, which, although Gothic, are far from disagreeable, and measuring about nine inches in width by six inches in height, with the arms, no doubt, of the family of Cunio at the top of it, are rudely engraved the following words, in bad Latin, or ancient Gothic Italian, with many abbreviations:
“The Heroic Actions, represented in Figures, of the great and magnanimous Macedonian King, the bold and valiant Alexander, [p130] dedicated, presented, and humbly offered to the most holy father Pope Honorius II, the glory and support of the Church, and to our illustrious and generous father and mother—by us, Allessandro Alberico Cunio, cavalier, and Isabella Cunio, twin brother and sister—first reduced, imagined, and attempted to be executed in relief, with a small knife, on blocks of wood, and made even and polished by this dear sister, and continued and finished by us together, at Ravenna, from eight pictures of our invention, painted six times larger than here represented, engraved and explained by verses, and thus marked upon the paper, to perpetuate the number of them, and to enable us to present them to our relatives and friends, in testimony of gratitude, friendship and affection. All this was done and finished by us when only sixteen years of age.”[55]
The book was, apparently, in its original binding of thin plates of wood, covered with leather, but without any gilding, ornamented only by crossed divisions marked with a heated iron. Papillon says that the engravings were cut in a crude, experimental manner, and that they appear to have been printed by rubbing the palm of the hand or a frotton many times over the paper. The tint of the ink was a pale, faded blue, mixed as water color. The field of the engravings was badly routed out; projections that soiled the paper appeared in several places, obscuring words, which had subsequently been written on the margin. Neither the engravings, nor the memoir bound with them, furnish us with dates; but there can be no doubt as to the period in which the engravings were ostensibly made, for Pope Honorius occupied the papal chair only between April 2, 1285, and April 3, 1287.
There is nothing improbable in the statement that prints like these could have been made in 1285. There may be a substratum of truth under the exaggerations raised by family pride and a love for the marvelous; but the memoir of the lives of the two Cunios, and the details furnished by Papillon about the appearance of the engravings, are altogether unsatisfactory.{1} Whatever opinion may be formed of the credibility [p131] of the story of the two Cunios,[56] it must be admitted that their prints had no known influence in the development of engraving on wood. They were not imitated. The interval between the years 1285 and 1440 is almost an absolute blank in the annals of Italian engraving: it furnishes us neither trace nor tradition of engravings on wood. The oldest authentic Italian engravings on wood are in _The Meditations of John of Turrecremata_, a book printed at Rome in 1467; but these engravings cannot be claimed as illustrations of the development of the Italian practice of the art, for they were designed and cut by or for Ulric Hahn, a German printer.
This silence of the early chroniclers should not be construed as evidence that there was no engraving on wood; it is evidence only of the trivial nature of the work done. To specify the work is to justify the neglect. It consisted, so far as we know, only of stamps for the use of notaries, autographs for those who did not write, trade-marks for merchants’ packages, outlined initials for inexpert scribes, and engraved blocks for manufacturers of textile fabrics. This paltry work seems specially inappropriate for the initiation of a great art destined to make a revolution in literature.
Engraving on wood was not considered as a great art by the earlier engravers. As it appeared to them, it was but a makeshift, a mechanical method of evading the labor of difficult drawing or of abridging its drudgery. To the chroniclers of this period, engraving was entirely unworthy of notice. No one could see that it had any marked merit. So far from deserving praise, the art of engraving and printing letters was [p132] regarded as a confessed acknowledgment of inability to draw, more deserving of censure than of praise. There were in the thirteenth century workmen, now unknown, who produced exquisite workmanship in the carving of wood and stone, in the chasing of gold and silver, and in the copying of manuscripts. If these men were thought unworthy of notice, the rude engravers on wood would be entirely forgotten. The paltriness of the printed matter, and the perishable nature of the substances on which the printing was done, will account for the disappearance of most of the early prints. Nobody cared to preserve a bit of printed cotton cloth as evidence of the method of printing then in fashion. Nobody could foresee that it would be of any interest.
The trivial nature of the work cannot be considered as an evidence of the incompetency of the engravers to do work of merit. They left us no printing of permanent value, because they knew of no proper substance to print upon. The only materials available were parchment, papyrus and stiff cotton paper, all of which were unsuitable. Printing can be done to advantage only on paper, but paper was sparingly used in the fourteenth century. When paper came, printing followed.
[p133]
VIII
The Introduction of Paper in Europe.
Paper Invented in China in the First Century . . . Paper-Making in Japan, with Illustration . . . Description of Process . . . An Illustration of Oriental Book-Making . . . The European Process like the Oriental . . . Paper known in Europe in the Fifth Century . . . Not used for Writing . . . Made of Cotton . . . Earliest Notice of Linen Paper . . . Differences of Opinion concerning its Introduction . . . Different Methods of Preparing Pulp . . . Early European Paper-Mills . . . Illustration of Paper-Mill by Jost Amman . . . Mills in Spain, France, Sicily and Italy . . . Possible Antiquity of the European Process . . . Paper not used by Copyists . . . Its Inferiority . . . Vellum Preferred . . . Palimpsests . . . Government Interference with Manufacturers of Paper . . . Changes of Fashion in Paper . . . Paper came in Proper Time.
* * * * *
It is peculiarly characteristic of all the pretended discoveries of the middle ages, that when the historians mention them for the first time, they treat them as things in general use. Neither gunpowder, nor the compass, nor the Arabic numerals, nor paper, are anywhere spoken of as discoveries, and yet they must have wrought a total change in war, in navigation, in science and in education.
_Sismendi._
* * * * *
According to Chinese chronology, paper was invented in China at the close of the first century, or one hundred and forty-five years[57] after the Chinese invention of printing. All the printing that had been done before the invention of paper was on sheets or leaves of cotton or silk. This version of the antiquity of the Chinese invention is in some degree corroborated by a Japanese chronicle, which says that paper was exported from the Corea to Japan between the years 280 and 610 A. D. In time, the Japanese paper was made so superior to the Chinese, that there was no further need for importation. This superiority has been maintained to this day. In some branches of paper-making, the Japanese are [p134] without rivals in either the eastern or western world. Two hundred and sixty-three kinds of paper are now made in Yeddo. Some of them may have their origin in reasons of habit, caprice or fashion, but most of them are made for specific uses. Papers are manufactured not only for writing and printing, but for hats, umbrellas, lanterns, clothing, dolls’ dresses, twine, candle-wick, and an endless variety of useful or ceremonious purposes. An anonymous author has wisely remarked: “When a people contrive to make saucepans that are used over charcoal fires, fine pocket-handkerchiefs, and sailors’ water-proof overcoats out of paper, they may be considered as having pretty thoroughly mastered the subject.”
The illustration on the opposite page is the reduced fac-simile of the engraving of a Japanese artist who has attempted to show how paper was made in his country in the eighteenth century. The grim old man who may be seen at the upper part of the illustration, with a leg in one page, and with head and body in another, is beating paper stock to a pulp.[58] His only tool is a forked club, with which he pounds on the stone, and macerates the leaves and inner bark of various trees that have been previously saturated in an adjoining tub that is supposed to contain a solution of caustic alkali. How the stock could be reduced to the requisite smoothness for paper pulp by this rough manipulation is a problem that no American paper-maker will undertake to solve. We only know that it is done and well done. The long tank in the centre of the left-hand page contains the pulp dissolved in water. Two men are taking out the pulp upon paper-moulds, or sieves of bamboo splints which have been wire-drawn and boiled in oil. The water taken up with the pulp is drained through the holes in the sieve, leaving upon the woven splints a thin and flabby web of paper pulp. The web is then couched on [p136] a surface of cloth or felt, or of some substitute of similar nature, on which, in turn, another layer of felt and pulp is placed. When the pile is of sufficient height it is pressed, until all the water that can be expelled by pressure is removed. The two attendants on the paper-makers near the tank are engaged in the work of interleaving the web and carrying it to be pressed. This done, the sheet is firm enough to be handled. It is then laid upon a smooth board where it stays until it is dry. The operation of surfacing or polishing the sheet of paper, by burnishing it with a smooth shell, is not shown in the engraving. But this finish was not given to all papers. The neatly corded bales show that paper was made in large quantities.
This engraving is of service as an illustration of oriental book-making. These two pages were engraved and printed together on one side of the paper. The sheet was then folded through the centre: the folded edge was made the outer edge, while the two cut or raw edges were neatly stitched together and made the back of the book. This method of sewing through the cut edges, instead of through the fold, began with the use of the cut leaves of silk or cotton, which were used in printing the earliest Chinese books before paper was made. If the cut edges of silk or cotton were made the outer edges of the book, the leaves would soon fray or ravel out in threads; if they were made the inner edges, the integrity of the leaf would necessarily be more secure. Like other habits and fashions, this curious mode of binding has been continued when the necessity for it has ceased to exist.
Although this engraving was made in the eighteenth century, it may be accepted as a correct representation of paper-making as it has always been practised in China and Japan. Rude as this process may seem, it is, in its more important features, excepting that of pulp-beating, the process that was used in Europe until the invention of the cylinder and Fourdrinier paper-making machines. Nor is this process entirely out of fashion. There are paper-makers yet living who have [p137] taken pulp out of the vats with hand moulds and deckle, and have couched it on felts, substantially by the same method that was in use in Asia fifteen hundred years ago.
Oriental paper-makers do not use rags nor raw cotton for making their pulp. They select different kinds of bamboo, and the bark and leaves of various trees, which they combine in unequal proportions, so as to produce for different kinds of paper the different qualities of strength, smoothness and flexibility. These materials are saturated in lime water, and are sometimes boiled to free them from useless matter. Barks are sometimes triturated with pestles in a mortar. While the greatest care is taken to prevent the cutting of the fibres in too short lengths, every expedient is made use of to split up the fibres in the finest threads. The result of this care is the production of papers of wonderful strength and flexibility.
It is admitted by all historians that the early European practice of paper-making was derived from Asia. How the knowledge of the art was transmitted to us from China, Persia or India, and where and when paper was first made in Europe are questions of controversy. The difficulty we encounter in an inquiry concerning its derivation is aggravated by the discovery that two kinds of paper—one, said to be made of cotton, and another, said to be made of linen or rags—were used in Europe at a very early period—a period in which we find no traces of the existence of a European paper-mill. Proteaux says that a thick card or card-like paper came in use during the fifth century,[59] when the manufacture of papyrus was declining. But its first use was not as a substitute for papyrus or parchment. It was called _charta damascena_, the card of Damascus; _charta gossypina_, or the cotton card; _charta bombycina_, or the silk-like card; _serica_, or the silky fabric. It was usually mentioned as a card; for it was so thick, and so unlike papyrus, that it was regarded as a different thing, and [p138] was defined by a different name. This cotton card or cotton paper was thick, coarse, woolly, yellow and somewhat fragile. It was so inferior to papyrus, parchment or linen paper as a writing surface, and was so generally neglected by professional copyists, that all the earlier chroniclers of paper-making have passed it by as unworthy of notice.
The linen paper, so called, came in use at a much later period, but there is great disagreement among authorities as to the date. Meerman, the author of a learned book on the origin of printing, offered a reward for the earliest manuscript on linen paper, which, he decided, could not have been used in Europe before 1270. Montfaucon, a learned antiquary, says that he could find no book nor leaf of linen paper of earlier date, but he thinks that it was known and used in Europe to a limited extent before 1270. Gibbon, citing the authority of Arabian historians, says that a linen paper was made in Samarcand in the eighth century, and leaves his reader to form the inference that not long after, paper found its way to Europe. Casiri, a Spanish author, who made a catalogue of the Arabian manuscripts in the Escurial, says that in this collection are many old manuscripts of the twelfth century on linen paper, including one of the year 1100. But we are not told that this paper was made in Spain; it may have been brought from the East. Tiraboschi, an Italian historian, says that linen paper is the invention of an Italian, Pace de Fabiano of Treviso, who flourished about the middle of the fourteenth century. But Peter Mauritius, abbot of a French monastery at Cluny, in a treatise written by him in 1120 against the Jews, says, “The books we read every day are made of the skins of sheep, goats and calves [parchment], of oriental plants [papyrus], or of the scrapings of old rags, or of any other compacted refuse material.”[60] It would be a hopeless task to attempt to gather from these discordant [p139] statements a satisfactory explanation of the origin or of the introduction of paper in Europe.
The modern paper-maker, who produces paper pulp from mixtures in variable proportions of all kinds of textile rubbish, will doubt the ability of any antiquary to distinguish linen from cotton paper, especially when Tiraboschi admits that cotton paper was made in Italy during the fourteenth century so closely resembling linen paper that only a paper-maker could perceive the difference. The microscope that enables the educated investigator to detect the characteristic features of every kind of vegetable fibre is really the only safe test[61] for determining the constituents of paper; but it does not appear that this instrument was ever used by the authors who have undertaken to discriminate between linen and cotton paper. The explanation of these contradictory statements must be sought in another quarter.
The peculiarities of the so-called linen and cotton papers are due more to their distinct methods of manufacture than to the material used. The earliest notice of the manufacture of paper in Europe clearly specifies the practice of two unlike methods. We are told that, in the year 1085, a paper-mill at Toledo, which had been operated by the Moors, passed into the hands of Christians, probably Spaniards, who made great improvements in the manufacture. The Moors made paper pulp by grinding the raw cotton, a process which hastened the work, but it shortened and weakened the fibres, making a paper that was tender and woolly. The Spaniards stamped the cotton and rags into a pulp, by pestles or stamps driven by water power, a method which preserved the long fibres that gave the fabric its strength. This paper, now known as linen paper, was then known as parchment cloth. The cotton paper of the antiquarians is, apparently, the paper that had its fibres cut by grinding; the linen paper was the paper made from pulp that had been beaten. [p140]
The first European paper-mills seem to have been established by the Moors or Saracens who had direct intercourse with the East. Paper was made at Xativa, Valencia, and at other towns of Spain, by Moors and Spaniards, and the paper made at Xativa was much commended for its whiteness. We find mention, also, of a family of paper-makers in the island of Sicily in the year 1102. For many years the Moors were not only the largest manufacturers, but the largest consumers. In various cities of Spain, seventy libraries were opened for the instruction of the public, during a period when all the rest of Europe, without books, without learning and without cultivation, was plunged in the most disgraceful ignorance.[62]
In this illustration, which was first published by Jost Amman in his _Book of Trades_, we see something of the mechanism always used for preparing the pulp for paper. Large water-wheels, partially seen through the window, set in motion a wooden cylinder evenly spiked with projections. As the cylinder revolved, these projections tilted up, and then dropped heavy stampers of hard wood that beat against the torn and well-soaked rags lying within the tank. The stamping was continued until the macerated rags were of the consistency of cream. The stuff thus made was then transferred to tubs, at one of which a [p141] paper-maker is at work. The dipping out of the pulp with hand mould and deckle, the couching of the web on interleaving felts, and its transfer to be pressed by the brisk little boy, are the same processes in all points as those that have been described in the Japanese engraving. The processes of sorting and washing the rags, and of bleaching the half-made stuff are not shown in the cut, but they were not neglected. The screw press behind the paper-moulder is the only innovation of importance.