Papermaking

Papermaking is the craft and industry of forming sheets from a thin suspension of cellulose fibres in water that is drained through a screen, pressed and dried into a mat of interwoven fibres. Almost all paper is now made by machine, but handmade paper survives as a specialized craft and an art medium, formed one sheet at a time on a mould and deckle and then couched onto felt and pressed. Tradition credits Cai Lun, an official of the Han court, with inventing paper about 105 CE, though paper with legible Chinese writing has been dated earlier, to 8 BC. The technique spread to the Islamic world in the eighth century and on to Europe, where watermarks were well established by 1300. The Fourdrinier machine of the early nineteenth century began modern continuous papermaking, and wood pulp replaced rags from the 1840s.