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Paper
handwork was first learnt by the Arabs in about the 12th century.
In those years the Amalfi people had continuous commercial contacts
with all Mediterranean people
and the new means for writing, much more practical than parchment,
was very useful to transcribe the very numerous transactions that
Amalfi merchants carried out at their own home or in all the ports
they landed. If compared with sheepskin (that is parchment), precious
Amalfi paper was lighter, easily-handled and more clearly readable.It seemed
obvious that the town was equipping itself to produce new material
on its own account.
The Amalfi paper processing consisted
in collecting rags and tissues preferably of cotton that were then
beaten by wooden mauls to split their fibres. The soobtained skein
was put for retting in majolica vats in a lot of water. After a
certain time, the rags melted and amalgamated with the liquid in
which they had been left in infusion. In this semiliquid substance
an iron loom was dipped. Its net with very narrow meshes held back
the most solid part and let the excessive water filter. Then a pulp
layer was rolled out by a press and dried. After the drying process,
a very refined paper sheet was obtained (that was once
called cotton cloth): on it there was nearly always the producer's
watermark, that the iron loom imprinted indelibly on the pulp inside
the vat by a simple pressure.
Of
course, with the passing of centuries, the tools used were continuously
improved, introducing for example metallic rather than wooden tools
or rudimental mechanisms that lightened workmen's labour.
However, Amalfi Paper processing remains substantially the same up to the present
day.
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