A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibers such as wood pulp, old rags, and other ingredients. Before the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt, all paper in a paper mill was made by hand, one sheet at a time, by specialized laborers.
History
Historical investigations into the origin of the paper mill are complicated by differing definitions and loose terminology from modern authors: Many modern scholars use the term to refer indiscriminately to all kinds of mills, whether powered by humans, by animals, or by water. Their propensity to refer to any ancient paper manufacturing center as a "mill", without further specifying its exact power source, has increased the difficulty of identifying the particularly efficient and historically important water-powered type.
Human and animal-powered mills The use of human and animal-powered mills was known to Muslim and Chinese papermakers. However, evidence for water-powered paper mills is elusive before the 11th century. The general absence of the use of water-powered paper mills in Muslim papermaking before the 11th century is suggested by the habit of Muslim authors at the time to call a production center not a "mill", but a "paper manufactory". Scholars have identified paper mills in Abbasid-era Baghdad in 794–795. The evidence that waterpower was applied to papermaking at this time is a matter of scholarly debate. In the Moroccan city of Fez, Ibn Battuta speaks of "400 mill stones for paper". Since Ibn Battuta does not mention the use of waterpower and such some watermills would be grotesquely high, the passage is generally taken to refer to human or animal force.
Water-powered mills
An exhaustive survey of milling in Al-Andalus did not uncover water-powered paper mills, nor do the Spanish books of property distribution (Repartimientos) after the Christian reconquest refer to any. Arabic texts never use the term mill in connection with papermaking, and the most thorough account of Muslim papermaking at the time, the one by the Zirid Sultan Al-Muizz ibn Badis, describes the art purely in terms of a handicraft. Donald Hill has identified a possible reference to a water-powered paper mill in Samarkand, in the 11th-century work of the Persian scholar Abu Rayhan Biruni, but concludes that the passage is "too brief to enable us to say with certainty" that it refers to a water-powered paper mill. This is seen by Leor Halevi as evidence of Samarkand first harnessing waterpower in the production of paper, but notes that it is not known if waterpower was applied to papermaking elsewhere across the Islamic world at the time. Robert I. Burns remains sceptical, given the isolated occurrence of the reference and the prevalence of manual labour in Islamic papermaking elsewhere before the 13th century. Hill notes that paper mills appear in early Christian Catalan documentation from the 1150s, which may imply Islamic origins, but that hard evidence is lacking. Burns, however, has dismissed the case for early Catalan water-powered paper mills, after re-examination of the evidence. The identification of early hydraulic stamping mills in medieval documents from Fabriano, Italy, is also entirely unsubstantiated. Clear evidence of a water-powered paper mill dates to 1282 in the Iberian Crown of Aragon. A decree by the Christian king Peter III addresses the establishment of a royal "molendinum", a proper hydraulic mill, in the paper manufacturing center of Xàtiva. This early hydraulic paper mill was operated by Muslims in the Moorish quarter of Xàtiva, though it appears to have been resented by sections of the local Muslim papermakering community; the document guarantees them the right to continue the way of traditional papermaking by beating the pulp manually and grants them the right to be exempted from work in the new mill. At Toscolano Maderno, evidence for water-powered paper making dates from at least the late 14th century. Over the following centuries Toscolano would become a major paper producer. The first permanent paper mill north of the Alps was established in Nuremberg by Ulman Stromer in 1390; it is later depicted in the lavishly illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle. From the mid-14th century onwards, European paper milling underwent a rapid improvement of many work processes. The size of a paper mill before the use of industrial machines was measured by counting its vats. Thus, a "one vat" paper mill had only one vatman, one coucher, and other laborers.
15th century The invention and subsequent diffusion of Gutenberg's printing press across Europe increased demand for paper. This rising demand encouraged the development of techniques to produce thinner paper and the construction of more paper mills. In 1453, the Basel Mill was converted into a paper mill. By the late 15th century, paper mills were diffusing throughout Europe. An operational paper mill is recorded in Silesia by 1490, and the first paper mill in Poland was built in 1491 near Kraków. The first reference to a paper mill in England was in a book printed by Wynken de Worde c. 1495. The mill, near Hertford, was short-lived and belonged to John Tate. By the end of the 15th century, there were about 50 water-powered paper mills throughout German lands.
16th century The first known water-powered paper mill in China was recorded in 1570, during the Ming dynasty. In Muscovy, a 1576 land-sale document mentions a paper mill that had formerly stood on a river near Moscow. The first Dutch paper mill was erected in Dordrecht in 1586 by Hans van Aelst, a refugee from Antwerp, after which paper mills spread through the northern Low Countries. John Spilman received a patent to be the sole manufacturer of white paper in England and established a paper mill at Dartford, Kent, in 1588. By the late 1500s, there were roughly 190 paper mills throughout German lands.
17th century
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