An Observation About Antique Paper

[sidthecat]

A few weeks ago I spent an afternoon at the Southern California Antiquarian Book Show, an Aladdin's Cave for the bibliophile. I was permitted to closely examine and, once or twice, handle books and manuscripts of enormous age. Nothing I could afford, of course.

 

What I found interesting was that the old, laid papers were quite thin. In a lot of television you see people writing with untrimmed quill pens on leaves of quite thick paper (prop managers may be using water color paper) but real manuscript paper would probably handle a lot like Tomoe River - or possibly the old Disney animation paper that I've hoarded since the Pleistocene.

 

Has anyone used or sourced this kind of paper? We'd love to hear of your experiences.

[Gloucesterman]

I have an old blank city voter registration book, from around 1920, with nice thick paper. It easily takes Noodler's Baystate Blue with no show through, at all! Oh yes, and the book is "elephant folio" size and for sale too!

[dcwaites]

You don't mention the age of the paper you were looking at, but some time ago I posted images of Captain Cook's journal / log of his trip to Australia. Those pages quite clearly showed writing from the other side showing through (not bleeding, just show-through).

 

This is what I mean --

 

http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/external/captaincooksjournal-tl.jpg

[amberleadavis]

I have an old blank city voter registration book, from around 1920, with nice thick paper. It easily takes Noodler's Baystate Blue with no show through, at all! Oh yes, and the book is "elephant folio" size and for sale too!

I had occasion to show off a page of that book along with a sample of Suffragist Carmine.

 

How about the old airmail paper. I think it would be like the current TR paper.

[sidthecat]

The papers varied in age, but I think most were 18th and 19th century. That type of paper is much older, though...Wikipedia says the technology dates back to the 12th century.

[inkstainedruth]

This thread reminds me of a conversation my husband and I had years ago, the first time we went to Colonial Williamsburg. It happened that there was an arts and crafts festival and there was a woman at one booth who made paper. And she told us that in the summertime CW would do paper making workshops and demos run by the person who works in the Printer's shop in the historic area. But he wasn't allowed to make good quality paper... because what was made in the 18th Century at Williamsburg *wasn't* good quality paper. The "good" stuff was all imported. And the guy was required to do ONLY the "authentic"grade of paper that would have been made in Williamsburg -- not anything better.

Mind you, Williamsburg wasn't that isolated -- we were told by one of the docents/re-enactors that three hundred ships docked at Richmond (roughly 20 miles away, IIRC) a year during that time. And of course Williamsburg was the capital of the colony of Virginia. So good quality paper *was* available -- just not made there. It was cheaper in the long run to have things like that imported, because of the lower manufacturing costs (the Colonies were rich on raw materials, but didn't have the population of, say England -- for instance, a blacksmith in the Colones was a "jack of all trades" whereas in 18th Century Europe (particularly London) there was amount of available labor -- so not only could they keep their costs in good shape, due to the London work force but that work could be specialized: nails, needles, would have been made by different businesses.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited for typos

Edited March 8, 2018 by inkstainedruth

[Octo]

I have both TR paper and air mail paper from WW II (from my parents estate) and they are not the same. The old air mail stationery is more transparent and has a cockle finish. It has show through, but both sides are FP friendly, so one CAN write on the back by being careful to write between the lines written on the front.

[amberleadavis]

The airmail that I tried was from the 1970s and it was absolutely smooth. It came from Japan but was a light blue.

[sidthecat]

I bought a hideously expensive notebook at the LA pen show because the paper reminded me of that paper...and I’d just sold a couple of pens. It’s really too nice to contain my grubby thoughts.