Raw Materials for Old Papermaking in China

Abstract

The discovery that fibers can be formed into a thin sheet on a screen is the key to the invention of paper. Chinese papermakers from very ancient times had selected almost all the kinds of plants known to modern paper industry as producing the best of fibers and yet being most economical in cost. The raw materials producing such fibers include the bast plants, tree bark, stalks of grasses, and other vegetation. Hemp is the earliest material known to have been used for papermaking in China before the Christian era, followed by paper mulberry from the early second century A.D. Rattan was especially popular for making the best paper in southeast China for almost a millennium from the third to about the twelfth century, when the supply of the raw material was exhausted. Bamboo then gradually replaced both rattan and hemp as the chief material for papermaking since the latter part of the eighth century. Rice and wheat straw, the bark of sandalwood and other trees, stalks of hibiscus, seaweed, and certain other plants were also used in making special kinds of paper. Whether cotton and silk have ever been used is controversial. Raw cotton is needed for textiles and is not economical, and pure silk is said to be technically not feasible for papermaking. It was probably the floss silk from the waste of silk cocoons which was used for making paper for special uses. Apparently, the raw plant fibers were not used by European papermakers until the eighteenth century when paper of Western origin began to be fabricated from raw hemp, straw, wood, and other materials as the supply of linen and cotton rags becalne insufficient. It was not until the early part of the nineteenth century that wood pulp was widely used as the chief raw material in papermaking.