The Craft of Making Paper by Hand

At the Amalfi Paper Mill on Italy's coast, a vatman dips a mould and deckle into cotton rag pulp. In a single motion, he lifts the mould, shakes to settle fibres, and produces a sheet whose deckled edges, watermark, and texture distinguish it from any machine product. The mill has made paper this way since the thirteenth century.

The process has not fundamentally changed since its Chinese invention two thousand years ago. Plant fibres are beaten to pulp, suspended in water, deposited on a screen, pressed, and dried. Each step affects character: beating determines texture, the screen creates structure, drying affects flatness.

Japanese washi, a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, represents the pinnacle. Papers from kozo, mulberry inner bark, achieve strength and delicacy that seems contradictory: thin enough to transmit light yet strong enough for centuries of handling. Echizen in Fukui Prefecture has produced washi for over fifteen hundred years.

The UNESCO inscription of 2014 covers three papers specifically rather than washi in general: Hosokawa-shi from Saitama, Sekishu-banshi from Shimane, and Hon-minoshi from Gifu. Each must be made from kozo alone, with the fibre dispersed using neri, a mucilage pressed from the root of the tororo-aoi plant, which slows drainage through the screen and lets the maker build a sheet that is thin and even at once. Substituting a synthetic formation aid disqualifies the paper from the designation.

Handmade paper serves functions machine paper cannot. Printmakers favour its ability to receive ink, moulding into incised lines. Conservators use neutral-pH papers for book repair. Calligraphers value the way surfaces interact with ink, providing just enough resistance.

The distinction that costs buyers money is between handmade, mouldmade and machine-made. A genuinely handmade sheet is lifted individually and carries four deckle edges. A mouldmade sheet comes off a cylinder mould machine, as at St Cuthberts Mill in Wells, and carries two deckles and two trimmed edges. Fourdrinier machine paper has none. Mouldmade paper is excellent and considerably cheaper, and it is also frequently sold at handmade prices, so count the deckles before paying for them.

The watermark, created by wire design on the mould, is a security feature from thirteenth-century Italy still used in currency today. It is also the papermaker's signature, identifying mill and individual sheet.

A single vatman produces roughly five hundred sheets per day versus tens of thousands per hour from machines. Yet the market persists, sustained by artists, printers, and individuals valuing a material that responds differently to the hand.

For work meant to last, check the fibre and the sizing rather than the price. Cotton rag is close to pure alpha-cellulose and carries no lignin, which is what yellows wood-pulp paper as it oxidises, and permanent papers made to ISO 9706 also hold an alkaline reserve, usually calcium carbonate, to buffer atmospheric acidity. Gelatine tub-sizing, still used at Amalfi and by several British mills, is what lets a watercolourist lift and rework paint. Below about 300gsm a sheet needs stretching before it is wetted.

Visit https://www.museodellacarta.it for the Amalfi Paper Museum. Handmade paper reminds us that surfaces we write on affect what we produce. A sheet made by hand invites different attention, and what we place upon it responds accordingly.