Paper-Making Chronology

Based on Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technology of an Ancient Craft (London: Crescent Press, 1957.).

• C3 BCE  Meng T'ien is credited with inventing the hair-bristle painting brush, making painted calligraphy possible.  Documents were painted upon woven silk.  Many survive from the lucrative "Silk Road" commerce in sites buried by desert sands and preserved by extremely dry climate in western China.  (Also see Valery Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History, Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015.)
  
• 105 CE  Ts'ai Lun, eunuch and imperial servant, first reports paper's invention (by others?) and traditionally is credited with paper's invention.  His apprentice, Tso Tzu-yi, improved the process. (48-53)
• 610 CE  the monk Kokyo introduces the concept of paper to the Empress Shokoku. (53)
  
• 708-806 CE / 806-1155 CE, the Nara and Heian Eras, an annual imperial paper levy on papermaking guild supplied the government with 20,000 sheeets of the finest paper and 46,000 sheeets of colored papers for non-writing uses. (54-59)
  
• 751 CE  Battle of Tharaz (Taraz or Talas) River, Turkmenistan, Islamic armies of the Abbasid Caliphate and their Tibetan Empire allies, fighting Imperial Tang Dynasty Chinese armies, capture a group of paper craftsmen who are induced to reveal the secret of papermaking.  The craft spreads west to Samarkand, Baghdad, Damascus, Egypt, and Morocco, following the spread of Islam. (60)  Most early sacred Islamic texts are manuscripts on paper.
  
• 770 CE Japanese Empress Shitoku commissions the "Million Printed Prayers," a printed block book of charms against disease, distributed to shrines all over Japan.  Many of the shrines and books still survive.  By tradition, dated 24 May 770 but no dated copies survive. (61)
• 868 CE, May 11 (13th day of the fourth moon of the ninth year of Xiantong), Wang Chieh (also "Jie") prints The Diamond Sutra, the first dated book printed in the world.  He distributed it for free on 17-foot scrolls in the memory of his parents. (61)
  
• ca. 1100-1300 CE, papermaking spreads to Europe from Morocco to Moorish Spain to Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands, for use in manuscripts but not for important books intended for long life, which were still made from parchment (animal skins). (60)
• Moorish papermakers used moulds made of vegetable fibers, which were replaced by wire in Europe after wire-drawing technology made cheap wire production possible in bulk. (90-91)
• Spanish (Moorish) papermaking began ca. 1150 CE. (114)  German papermaking began in 1450-1455 CE (Around 1454-5, Gutenberg prints the 42-line Bible, first on parchment but most copies on paper.)
• 1495 CE, John Tate of Hereford operates the first English papermill.  First used in known surviving printed book by Wynkyn de Worde, formerly William Caxton's pressman, the Bartolomeus, 1495.  (115)  Tate's mill goes out of business in 1507 because of cheaper European paper imports.  (n. 116)  Almost all English books are printed on European paper until the late C16.

Some Dard Hunter principles of papermaking and text production:

• The first Asian papers available for printing were "only paper that had primarily been made for writing . . . and therefore the method of printing was adapted to the paper at hand--not the paper to the printing" (61).  I.e., early papers (e.g., Japanese rice paper) were translucent and made for scrolls, painted only on one side because 2-sided writing would show through and make both sides illegible.  Early printed Japanese books were woodblock prints on single sides of scrolls (61-2).

• European paper was coated with gelatine sizing (made from animal bones), which created "a hard, opaque and impervious surface well adapted to the European mode of writing with a quill pen," but not for printing.  "It was this unielding linen and cotton paper, made impervious to fluid writing ink by the application of animal gelatine, that made necesssary the invention of the printing press" (62).  I.e., the immense pressure of the adapted goldsmith's press forced the ink-coated type down into the paper, whereas ink brushed onto Asian papers stands on the paper's surface, ideally for ink painting (sumi).   The need for linen rags and sheep and cow bones to make printing paper led to their collection by "rag and bone shops" in English cities.