Rag paper

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Rag paper
Embroidery and lace pattern book, vol. 1, by Margaretha Helm, Germany, Nuremburg, c. 1720, rag paper - Royal Ontario Museum - DSC04416.JPG
Type Paper
Material Fiber crop rags
Introduced106 CE, China

Rag paper, or rag-made paper, is a category of paper that is made from a pulp of discarded textiles, rope and other fiber products. Rag paper in its various forms was a widely used paper for most of the past two millennia. Production spread from its origin in China in the early 2nd century along the Silk Road to the Islamic world by the 8th century, and to Christian Europe by the 12th century. Western Europe came to dominant rag production up through the mid-19th century, when rag paper was rejected in favor of far more cost-efficient pulpwood acidic paper.

Contents

Rag paper is valued today as a specialty paper for its archival quality and tear resistance compared to wood pulp paper. [1] [2] Modern rag paper is often cotton paper, made from cotton linters, with a usual pH of 6.4 and degree of polymerization of 1481.2. [3]

History

Pre-Modern

China

The invention of rag paper is attributed to Cai Lun in 106 CE, Luoyang, China, when he beat hemp and ramie rags with rope scraps, paper mulberry and other fibers into a pulp. Dunhuang and Turfan were major centers of rag paper production in the first millennium, possibly due to their desert environment incentivizing rag re-use versus mulberry paper production. Rag paper production declined in China after the 10th century due to the rising cost of textiles. [4] [5]

Islamic world

16th century Islamic miniature Brooklyn Museum - Portrait of a Woman Standing.jpg
16th century Islamic miniature

Rag paper was introduced to the Middle East through the Silk Road prior to the 8th century, but domestic production only began by the 8th century, particularly in Baghdad. Arab papermakers developed 'pure' rag paper, made from an alternative pulp entirely constituting linen rags; this paper supplanted papyrus and parchment for most uses by the 11th century. [6] [7] : 678 

Some 13th-14th century Muslims were initially skeptical of rag paper imported from Europe, purporting it to break Islamic dietary laws vis-a-vis Christian worker contamination, as well as objecting to Christian watermarks. Ibn Marzuq rejected these concerns in a fatwa, pointing to the cleaning process and historical alternative writing material use as justifications. [8] : 44–46  [9]

Europe

Rag paper spread to Al-Andalus by the mid-10th century, with Xàtiva being a major production center of linen rag paper by the 11th century. Sephardic Jews were heavily involved in the rag paper industry. The Reconquista saw Spanish Christians increasingly in possession of libraries of Andalusian paper books, spurring a Western European paper industry utilizing cotton rags in addition to linens. [10] [11]

In the late 12th century, rag paper spread to Italy through Mediterranean trade with the merchant republics. Amalfi paper was a particularly relevant Italian rag paper by the early 13th century; its prevalence as a writing material is marked by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor banning its use for court documents, in favor of parchment. [12]

Modern

18th century American rag paper shop Rags to riches.jpg
18th century American rag paper shop

Early modern

Following the invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the cost of book production dropped significantly, increasing paper demand. This introduced rag shortages for producers in Italy and Holland, and a rag export market demand for less urban regions like Portugal and the New World colonies. Rag exporters and local paper mills competed for a limited rag supply, like in the Republic of Lucca, a major rag paper production center: a late-16th century rag shortage led to conflict between rag exporters and local paper mills, leading to a 1695 accord to regulate the rag export market. [13]

Printing press production speeds did not significantly increase until the 1812 invention of the steam-powered printing press by Friedrich Koenig. Conversely, the 1799 invention of the paper machine mechanized the rag paper industry. [14]

As the Industrial Revolution spread, Western Europe became the major exporters of rag paper, enjoying ample rag supply from urban center ragpickers and industrial textile production. The Ottoman Empire's domestic paper industry collapsed over the course of the late 18th century, succumbing to rag shortages and European price competition. [8] The nascent American rag paper industry struggled to meet rag demand as well, as colonists could not be dissuaded from keeping rags for their own use; states and industrialists implored people to keep 'rag bags' to increase supplies. [15] : 59–67 

Transition to pulpwood industrial standard

Rag sorter at American Writing Paper Company, Holyoke, MA Holyoke, Massachusetts - Paper. American Writing Paper Co. Rag sorting (Irish). - NARA - 518336.jpg
Rag sorter at American Writing Paper Company, Holyoke, MA

The 1844 invention of the rotary printing press and the rise of literacy in industrialized nations increased demand for and output of print products. As the rag paper print economy hit its zenith in the 1850s, even Western European industrial paper producers struggled to meet paper demand as it outpaced domestic rag-picking. In the United Kingdom, excise taxes on rags coupled with foreign demand for rag exports particularly bottle-necked the British rag paper industry; producers attempted to increase supply by bleaching colored rags, and housemaids were implored to sell their spare rags instead of keeping them as menstrual rags. The London Times put out a bounty in 1855 for £1,000 for an alternative to rag paper. [14] [16] [17]

In the United States, rag shortages continued from the 18th century through the Panic of 1837, incentivizing experiments with alternative natural fibers. Corn husk paper, straw paper, and Manila hemp paper were notable alternatives invented in the first half of the 19th century, but the standard American industrial pulp remained imported European linen rags cut with raw domestic cotton. [15] : Ch.11 

With the introduction of esparto grass paper in the 1860s and sulfite process pulpwood paper in the later 19th century, rag-paper became increasingly economically obsolete. Newspapers were greatly incentivized to shift to newsprint, to minimize printing costs; however, archival quality suffered immensely due to slow fire decay. [17] [18]

Production

EB1911 - Paper - Fig 1.png
Kier for rag scouring
EB1911 - Paper - Fig 2.png
Schematic of industrial rag breaker

Rag-pickers would collect rags from urban areas to sell to producers, which would in turn make rag paper for sale back to city centers. Collected rags were cut, then scoured to remove impurities. The washed rags are ground into a pulp, then the pulp made into a slurry before screening, sizing and drying. [16] [15]

Industrialized rag paper production saw the introduction of paper machines, kiers, mechanical washers, and mounted scythe workstations to process larger amounts of rags. [15]

Types of rag paper

See also

References

  1. ↑ Erhardt, D.; Tumosa, C. (2005). "Chemical Degradation of Cellulose in Paper over 500 years". Restaurator: International Journal for the Preservation of Library and Archival Material. 26 (3): 155. doi:10.1515/rest.2005.26.3.151. S2CID   98291111.
  2. ↑ "The Deterioration and Preservation of Paper: Some Essential Facts". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on 20 January 2015. Retrieved 9 October 2025. Research by the Library of Congress has demonstrated that cellulose itself generates acids as it ages, including formic, acetic, lactic, and oxalic acids
  3. ↑ Verticchio, E., Frasca, F., Cavalieri, P. et al. Conservation risks for paper collections induced by the microclimate in the repository of the Alessandrina Library in Rome (Italy). Herit Sci 10, 80 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-022-00714-5
  4. ↑ "Paper and Printing", Cabinet, Global Networks of Innovation: China, Islam and the West, 1100-1700, Oxford University, retrieved 2025-09-16
  5. ↑ Helman-Ważny, Agnieszka (December 12, 2016). "More than meets the eye: Fibre and Paper Analysis of the Chinese Manuscripts from the Silk Roads". STAR: Science & Technology of Archaeological Research. 2 (2): 127–140. doi: 10.1080/20548923.2016.1207971 . ISSN   2054-8923 – via EBSCOhost.
  6. ↑ Shatzmiller, Maya (2018). "The Adoption of Paper in the Middle East, 700-1300 AD". Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient. 61 (3): 461–490. ISSN   0022-4995.
  7. ↑ Hoernle, A. F. Rudolf (1903). "Who Was the Inventor of Rag-Paper?". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland: 663–684. ISSN   0035-869X.
  8. 1 2 Bayram, Rebecca (2020). Water and wire; A survey of watermarks found in manuscripts from the Ottoman empire and the paper trail between Europe and the empire between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (M.Res. thesis). University of Birmingham. pp. 33–39. Retrieved 2025-10-17.
  9. ↑ Halevi, Leor (Oct 2008), "Christian Impurity versus Economic Necessity: A Fifteenth-Century Fatwa on European Paper" , Speculum, vol. 83, no. 4, The Medieval Academy of America, pp. 917–945, eISSN   2040-8072, ISSN   0038-7134
  10. ↑ Shadur, Joseph (2002). "Paper, papercutting arts, and shadow theater figures in different cultures". Traditional Jewish papercuts: an inner world of art and symbol. University Press of New England. pp. 3–17. ISBN   978-1-58465-165-9.
  11. ↑ Bellver, José (2021). "Looted Libraries and Legitimation Policies: Ptolemy, the Library of al-Arawšī and the Translation Movement in Toledo" . Arabica. 68 (5–6): 628–661. doi:10.1163/15700585-12341626. ISSN   0570-5398.
  12. ↑ Gartman, Joe (December 2023). "Ragtime in Amalfi". Italia!. pp. 37–39. Retrieved 2025-10-17.
  13. ↑ Gonçalves, Marina Furtado (Sep 2023), "The paper in the captaincy of Minas Gerais Identification of provenance from the material study of the separate documentation of the Casa dos Contos collection of the Arquivo Público Mineiro (1750-1800)", Acervo, vol. 38, no. 3, Rio de Janeiro: National Archives of Brazil, pp. 1–31
  14. 1 2 Adler, Rachel (2017-09-04), The 19th Century Moral Panic Over ... Paper Technology, Slate
  15. 1 2 3 4 Weeks, Lyman Horace (1916). A History of Paper-manufacturing in the United States, 1690-1916 (PDF). Lockwood Trade Journal Company.
  16. 1 2 Wynne, Deborah (2015). "Reading Victorian Rags: Recycling, Redemption, and Dickens's Ragged Children". Journal of Victorian Culture. 20 (1): 34–49. doi:10.1080/13555502.2014.991747. hdl: 10034/338205 . ISSN   1355-5502.
  17. 1 2 Menke, Richard (2018). "New Grub Street's Ecologies of Paper" . Victorian Studies. 61 (1): 60–82. doi:10.2979/victorianstudies.61.1.03.
  18. ↑ "Grand Old Rag". Time Magazine . Vol. 9, no. 2. January 1927. p. 22. Retrieved 2025-10-17– via EBSCOhost.
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