Their large-scale paper production became the basis of important trade between Arabs and the Mediterranean countries, in particular with Italy, thanks to the merchants of the maritime republics of Pisa and Genoa. From Genoa we have evidence that in that town or in neighboring towns there were two paper mills in 1235. A deed from that year presents us two owners of paper mills employing a papermaker (or an apprentice) named Gualterius Englesius, coming perhaps from a small town near Turin, called Caselle. And since we know that the Genoese merchants had an exclusive Italy, the Birthplace of Western Paper: Tracing the Development and Spread of Fabriano Paper franco mariani Franco Mariani speaking with students about the Zonghi Collection of antique watermarks, Fabriano Museum of Paper and Watermark. Photo by and courtesy of Lynn Sures, 2012. winter 2016 - 5 trade relationship with Andalusia, we may imagine that the paper manufactured in Genoa was similar to the Arabic–Spanish papers. If we accept that the first Italian paper mills were born in Genoa and its hinterland, what can we say about the spread of papermaking in Italy? Research in this field has not yielded reliable results, but perhaps it is possible to make a hypothesis, even one not in agreement with previous hypotheses. Because we do not have many thirteenth-century documents to refer to, we have to draw a path relying only on the few dates that we do know. For example, we know that in the first half of the thirteenth century notaries of Chiavenna (Lombardy, a step to crossing the Alps between Italy and northern Europe) used paper for the minutes of their official acts. In 1255 a stationer of Milan joined forces with a Genoese paper maker to manufacture a paper mill near Lake Como. In 1264 the municipality of Matelica (in the region of Marche, 20 kilometers or 12.5 miles from Fabriano) bought paper for official acts of the town. The oldest watermark found is from the year 1271 (Cremona, Lombardy). In Fabriano, several local papermakers were present as witnesses in an act signed in 1283. Thus we can demonstrate active papermaking in the thirteenth century. But how did paper arrive in Fabriano, a little town certainly not very important in the thirteenth century? The hypothesis can be traced on a map…let's walk along some of the main roads traveled by the merchants. Starting, for example, from Genoa a road leads towards Turin, and in Caselle (remember Gualterius) we have to pay customs and we can choose a road to France, or to Switzerland and then Germany. But from Genoa we can also go to the northeast and reach Piacenza, on the Po River; from here we can go to Milan (and then to Chiavenna and Germany) or to Bologna, Florence, Perugia, Foligno, l'Aquila, and Rome, too. Most of the oldest Italian paper mills were born in or nearby places touched by these roads; so it is natural to think that knowledge of papermaking technique was circulated by the merchants themselves. The search for new forms of profit, and the availability of places suitable for the establishment of paper mills (hilly or with foothills, and rivers with a constant flow) are the bases for the spread of papermaking in Italy. But why, of the many old paper mill towns, was Fabriano so important? Why, even today, is Fabriano is known as the "town of paper"? Fabriano has its own important role in the history of Italian paper mills, because in this town, in the Marche's Apennines, papermaking assumed a proto-industrial presence. Here, three important innovations were introduced: first, the breaking down of the fabric's fibers was no longer done by hand, but instead mechanically with a machine called a pila a magli multipli, a wooden hammer beater. It had originally been used for processing wool, also a common trade in Fabriano. The socalled gualchiera (felt machine), used for milling wool to process it into woolen fabric, was modified and used to break down linen and hemp rags. This freed the workers from a lengthy and tiring task. The quality of the final paper pulp improved and it was also possible to increase production. A second distinction was the sizing agent, which in Fabriano was made of animal gelatin, in contrast to substances containing starch which were responsible for the rapid disintegration of Arabian paper in an Italian climate. It is unknown how animal gelatin came into use, but if one considers that in the early period, wool and paper were processed and manufactured – possibly – at the same place if at different times of year, it may have been a chance discovery to use animal gelatin to size paper. Even if one accepts that this was simply an accident, it is to the credit of the papermakers of Fabriano that they recognized gelatin's advantage in papermaking and used it. The papermakers of Fabriano introduced a third technical innovation, one that at first glance was not obvious, but from an economic standpoint very important: the filigrana, or marca d'acqua (watermark), which identified every single sheet of paper that they made. A watermark is a sign (for example, a letter or the outline of a figure) that is in the paper itself and that on first glance is nearly imperceptible. If one looks at the sheet against a light, however, the watermark can be seen very clearly. It is visible because of a very fine difference in the paper's thickness, caused by a bent The paper mill of the Dukes of Urbino in Fermignano from a watercolor by F. Mingucci, 1632. Courtesy of the author. wire design attached to the screen of the papermaking mould. As the papermaker lifts the mould out of the pulpy mass in the vat, the layer of fibers is thinner where the watermark is attached to the mould. From the time papermakers put watermarks into each piece of paper they made, the markets knew which paper came from Fabriano. Since paper from Fabriano was of such high quality, it became ever more popular and the watermarks became not only a sign of origin, but also a mark of quality. Thanks to these three innovations and to its special quality, the paper from Fabriano was a great success in the markets; merchants exported the paper to every region of Italy and abroad, especially to France, Germany, and Northern Europe. In the early fourteenth century, in this little town at least fifty paper mills were active and production was able to meet any demand. For some years the new papermaking technique was exclusive to Fabriano papermakers: to preserve the "know-how" a special law forbade Fabriano papermakers from leaving the town or moving to other countries. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the number of paper mills in Fabriano had increased so quickly that competition for available rags and for clients became too great. In order to avert bankruptcy many mastri (master craftsmen) decided to try their luck elsewhere. Fabriano-style papermaking first appeared in the area surrounding Fabriano (Foligno, Urbino, and Ascoli Piceno), but later spread beyond the Apennines and the Alps. Eventually papermakers from Fabriano could be found everywhere that paper was produced: in the Abruzzi and Campania; in Bologna as well as in Treviso. Evidence of how the paper from Fabriano had developed into a standard of quality can be seen by the fact that when concluding contracts it was often clearly stated that the paper had to "be made in the Fabriano method" (facere cartam ad usum fabrianensem). In less than fifty years, important papermaking centers developed in Italy beyond Fabriano and were competing with each other. By the mid-1300s, paper mills were present throughout Italy. The introduction, in 1464, of printing with moveable type vastly increased the production of paper in Italy. For over two centuries the production technique did not change, but at the end of the seventeenth century in the Netherlands a new machine (called hollandaise in French, olandese in Italian) was created to prepare the pulp for papermaking. This Hollander beater replaced the hammer beater in breaking down the rags much faster. The first olandese was implanted in Italy in 1762 at the paper mill of Bracciano, owned by the noble family of the dukes Odescalchi. At the end of the eighteenth century, another important innovation was introduced: the continuous machine, able to form a sheet without end, a reel of paper. At this point the Italian mills took on the characteristics of a true industry, the small ones were disappearing to make way for large factories. The paper mills of Fabriano suffered the same fate but with a different outcome: an enterprising man, Pietro Miliani, took a paper mill in dire straits and turned it into an efficient factory. In a few years it absorbed other small local paper mills and concentrated the production in a single factory, the famous Cartiere Miliani, still in business today, now owned by the Fedrigoni Group. Western paper was born in Italy and with the efforts of the papermakers of Fabriano, it spread through Italy and all of Europe. Papermakers left their cities and emigrated in search of fortune, bringing with them their technique and their creativity, spreading the knowledge of how to make a paper bona et recipiente (good and suitable for writing). Thanks to them, artists, poets, writers, and ordinary people have benefited from their ideas, their feelings, their aspirations. Today, we continue to enjoy this immense cultural heritage.
