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» Nefertari - Paper

I was really interested to find out about the Chinese making paper.
Why,though,do you think it was more useful? Surely it was for exactly the same purposes?

-- posted by Nefertari

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» mariaandrea - Papermaking

Hi Lucy. As I read your quite sensible question, it occurred to me that a myriad of print and internet resources go into detail about the history of both papyrus and paper but none I have found have explained in a way that is satisfying to me exactly why paper became much more popular, even in Egypt eventually. (How's that for a run on sentence?:-)) I have theories, but it would have been nice to back them up with hard facts and places you could check out for yourself. Here is the theory that makes the most sense to me. Both papyrus and paper were used for the same purposes, as you pointed out, but perhaps the wide number of materials which were, and are, used for papermaking made it a more practical process than that used to make papyrus. The Chinese man credited with inventing paper in 105 AD was Tsai Lun. He used the bark of a mulberry tree to produce the paper pulp. Hemp and other fibers were later used and Europeans used linen rags to make pulp for centuries before a machine was invented which could make a continuous roll of paper. Then a machine was invented in 1840 that ground wood (which was obviously less expensive and far more available than linen) into pulp and the modern paper industry was born. While papyrus is useful, and once again popular among artisans, it is a handmade process still and not practical for widespread production. While I know that a wide variety of materials can be used on papyrus, such as ink and paint, I am still curious about how papyrus holds up under the printing process, such as the block printing done in China not long after paper was invented. It may or may not have had something to do with the popularity of paper, I don't really know.

I'm sorry I could not answer your question in more detail. Maybe someone will post a more satisfactory explanation. In the meantime, I did find an interesting website about many aspects of papermaking, ancient and modern. It's at The Museum of Papermaking.

-- posted by mariaandrea

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