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Show OL APPLIANCE AN METHOD 14 paper into the warm glutinous liquid. The sheets were then presse to extract the superfluous gelatine. This crude method of sizin the paper was extremely wasteful as many sheets were torn an bruised beyond use. The sizing room of the early paper mills, was for this reason, known as the "slaughter-house." One of the carliest Oriental methods of sizing paper consisted of covering th surface of the sheets with a thin coating of gypsum. The next improvement was to render the body of the paper, as well as the surface, impermeable to ink by the use of lichen, starch, or rice flour The Chinese used starch as a size for paper as carly as A 768 an its use continued until the fourteenth century when animal glu was substituted The sizing completed, the paper was again dried, and taken to room which was called the "saul." In England the finishing roo of a paper mill has been known by this name for several hundre years. The term may have come originally from the German wor "saal," and it is reasonable to surmise that the phrase was firs used in England by John Spilman, a German, who established mill in Kent in 1588, The saul was that part of the mill where th paper was surfaced and packed for transportation. The earlies method of producing a smooth surface on the paper was to burnish cach sheet by hand by the use of an agate or other gloss stone. The Orientals gave their paper a glassdike surface by thi procedure. This burnishing was done on one side of the sheet only but as the reverse side was laid against a smooth slab of marble o wood it also took on a certain amount of finish. Even when th Asiatic scribes made use of European paper they subjected it to polishing with an agate or soap stone burnisher which gave th paper an Oriental appearance; this action also closed the pores o the sheets and rendered them more suited for writing upon wit ink. A mechanical method of imparting a surface to paper wa brought into use in Europe in the early seventeenth century. Thi Digital Imag © 2004 University of Utah. All rights reserved |