Normally the inspiration for these posts comes from my main character, Red, a travelling alchemist in a fantasy world. But one of Red’s friends, a scholar and book aficionado named Luca, plays an important part in my WIP due to his expertise in papermaking (and I promise, the fact that my boyfriend just bought himself a handmade printing press is entirely coincidental!).

So for something different this week, I thought we’d focus on papermaking rather than alchemy. Papermaking has a long, varied history and, at its core, involves taking a bunch of solid stuff, turning it into a liquid, then squishing it and drying it out into a solid again . . . which, now that I write it all down, doesn’t sound that different from alchemy at all. 🙂 Papermaking is also way more complex a topic than I anticipated. For my story, Luca only had to know about wood pulp paper — the kind of stuff we first used for newsprint in the US. But there’s a million other varieties of writing materials out there:

  • traditional paper, first made in China using rags, hemp, and mulberry bark
  • papyrus, a forerunner of paper, made with plant stems
  • parchment, which is not paper (it’s animal skin)
  • parchment paper, which is paper made with plant fibers like flax or fir
  • vellum, which is a kind of parchment and therefore not paper
  • recycled paper, which is awesome!
  • glitter paper, which you can buy craft-at-home kits for
  • paper bags (did you know that there was a “mother of grocery bags”? Her name was Margaret Knight)
  • and many, many more.

Because I am a history nerd as well as a writing one, I have actually seen people making paper at reenactments. I still can’t get my mind around how that sludgey liquid stuff becomes nice paper sheets, though. The level of precision involved is impressive. Personally, I find ink very interesting as well . . . maybe that’ll be a post in the future!

In the meantime, have a great weekend everyone 🙂

Selected Resources

Bellis, Mary. “History of Papermaking.” ThoughtCo. Find it here.

“Differences between Parchment, Vellum, and Paper.” The National Archives. Here.

“The History of Paper.” Paper Recycles. Here.

Also, WikiHow would love to tell you how to make your own paper, if you’re going stir crazy at home! Find the article here.