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Paper

Page history last edited by Abigail Hustler 10 years ago

PAPER


By Abigail Hustler

 

Paper was a hugely significant material to everyday life in the Eighteenth Century.

This is an exciting period, through which we can trace the uses of paper as it moves from luxury item to a product of the everyday needed to meet the demands of the growing middle classes. 

High quality paper was in demand in a period when people had more leisure time than ever before. White paper was needed for writing, drawing and other pursuits of polite society. The rise of the novel meant that reading for pleasure was becoming activity enjoyed by a larger and more universal audience. Daily newspapers began to be produced. Banknotes became more and more widely used. Lower qualities of paper were also needed: brown paper was needed for wrapping and packaging in trade; cardboard and pasteboard used for industry, commerce, playing cards and bookbinding; wallpaper became increasingly popular.

Developments in the paper industry in part made this culture of paper use possible. However, the ever-rising demand also caused problems, for example a shortage of rags as raw materials, and sparked new innovations, such as the Hollander Beater and the movement towards the industrial paper-making of the Nineteenth Century.

 


Paper Production

 

The basic process of making paper has remained the same for over two thousand years, since its invention by the Chinese over two thousand years ago. There have been paper mills in Europe from the fourteenth century but, until the 1800s, all paper still had to be handmade and was produced from cloth rags, rather than the wood pulp and vegetable fibres used in today's processes.

Here is a very short description of the paper making process as it would have been in the Eighteenth Century:

  • Paper makers collect the rags. Different types of cloth produce different qualities of paper therefore these rags had to be sorted, an unpleasant job usually done by women.

 

 Sorting the Rags (Image 1) 

 

  • The rags are then broken down, back to individual fibres, being beaten in vats of water. This was a laborious process however it was made easier by the invention of the Holland Beater, in use in England by 1750. The Holland beater replaced the old 'stampers'. This was a hugely significant innovation, simply because it was so much faster. "By the end of the century, it was stated that it took forty of the old stampers twenty-four hours to reduce one hundredweight of rags to pulp. In the same time, the Hollander could prepare twelve times this amount" (Hill 57)

 

  • The mixture, made into a liquid pulp, is spread across a wire frame to form a sheet.

 

Forming the sheets (Image 2)                                       Pressing the paper (Image 3)

                                               

  • These sheets are laid on sheets of flannel to finish forming. 

  • The sheets are then put into piles which are pressed, to squeeze out the water. 

  • The paper is then hung to allow any remaining water to evaporate. 

Drying the Paper (Image 4)

 

A more detailed explanation of the process of hand-making paper can be found here:

 

 

The Eighteenth Century was the last century when these old paper-making techniques were used and, because of an ever-increasing demand for paper in society, problems were beginning to emerge. The rags used as the raw materials “grew increasingly scarce compared with the demand generated by the growth of printing” (Twede and Selke, 17).

Thus the import of rags increased massively “from 192.6 tons in 1725-30 to 3,404.6 in 1796-1800” (Hills, 54)

Shortages of rags was such that a law was passed, in 1666, stating that linen must no longer be used as a burials shrouds. Instead wool was used, a law not repealed until 1814.

 

However, although most areas of society were becoming dependant upon a paper culture, it was still a relatively expensive material, partly because it was handmade and partly because it was heavily taxed.

During the eighteenth century, the tax duties were raised frequently. Anxiety about this can be seen in Thomas Turner’s diary. His entry on Sat. 26 Nov. 1758 reads “…In the day read of several new almanacs which came down today, and I doubt but few will be sold by reason of the additional duty of one penny on the sheets, and two pence on the stitched.”

 

Paper consumption therefore was still quite limited; its main consumers were the upper and middle classes:

 

“An extremely rough estimate of annual consumption per head of white paper, at the turn of the sixteenth century, suggests a figure of about ¼ lb., and a rather more accurate one for the five years 1714-18, covering all types of paper, giving 1 ½ lb. per head per annum. Although this had risen to 2 ½ lb. by the end of the century, paper was still far from being a common item for most people… in 1955, consumption per head of all types of paper in Britain was nearly 130 lb.” (Hills 49)

 

Forgery

 

The significance and value placed on paper as a material was high. Society was becoming more and more dependant upon paper. For example, the establishment of a paper credit system was key development throughout the century: bills and accounts were increasingly recorded on paper and banknotes began probably to enter circulation .

However, a problem with the paper economy is the potential for forgery. This was a concern throughout the century regarding banknotes and official and legal documents. Watermarks used by most high quality paper manufactures became increasingly complex to try and deter forgery. This was important in the development of Banknotes. Watermarks were also an important way for the paper-makers to protect their brand, an anxiety demonstrated by producers such as the Whatman family (who developed wove paper, an extremely important advancement in quality). High-end paper was a luxury commodity and the names of these top manufactures were often used to try and sell counterfeit sheets.

 The penalty for forging paper was extremely harsh. This can be seen in some of the court cases of the day. Here are two examples:

 

- The trial of John Mills in 1719, in which he is accused of counterfeiting stamps for paper and parchment and selling Stamp paper he knew to be counterfeited (In the eighteenth century, law required paper used for official documents to be taxed and the Stamp shows the tax had been paid)

The case ended with him being found guilty and sentenced to death.

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17190514-47-defend283&div=t17190514-47

 

- In the trial of William Wynne Ryland, who stood accused of forging a bill for exchange for 200 l. sterling. A paper maker was called as a witness to examine the paper from which the forged bill was made. Ryland too was found guilty and sentenced to death.

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17830726-1-off3&div=t17830726-1

 


Paper in Everyday Life

 

Thomas Turner 

Much of the diary of Thomas Turner, written between 1754 and 1765, is concerned with his use of paper. As a middle class shop owner, it enters his everyday world far more often and in far more varied forms than, for example, in Boswell’s diary. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a business card for a stationers aimed at merchants and tradesman, like Thomas Turner. It gives a good indication of the many different types of paper he would need for his business. (Image 5)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turner deals with paper at many different stages of the commodity chain. He is forced to consider it as a raw material. He buys directly from the owner of the paper mill and, in return, sells back to the mill rags he has collected:

1755: “Sat. 12 July. This day sold Mr. Blackwell of Hawkhurst all my white rags at 27per cwt., and brought of him 12 couple of white pound and half-pound paper, 8 reams of midd[ling] hand ditto at 4s., 2 reams of brown cap and 1 ream of 2lb. ditto at 4s. 3d.” 

As a shop keeper, Turner needs different qualities of paper for the business. White paper, good quality for writing, is needed to keep accounts and give bills. Lesser quality brown and whity-brown paper would be wanted for wrapping and packaging. Quite often in the diary, Turner and his wife are seen wrapping tobacco parcels for sale.  

However, Turner also engages with paper further along the commodity market. Much of his leisure time is spent reading, either books or newspapers and magazines, or playing Cards. 

Turner’s diary provides a good example of the ways in which the emergence of the middle classes had stimulated the paper market. The growth of small businesses coupled with increased leisure time is closely linked to increasing demand for paper as a material.

 

James Boswell

 

Boswell’s London Journal was written 1762 – 63. Like Turner, his is a world built around paper. However, Turner's experience of paper is very different from that of Boswell. Boswell, with his literary aspirations, would have been a heavy consumer of white writing paper. However, because he is given paper by Mr Terrie, his landlord, who “is in a public office, so that he supplies me with Paper and all materials for writing, in great abundance, for nothing” (41), Boswell has no need to engage with paper at the level of a commodity. Instead, for Boswell, paper is used as a far more performative space. In Boswell's fashionable world of London society, paper becomes a tool through which social convention and etiquette can be performed. Interactions with others often take place through the medium of paper. Boswell writes an abundance of letters, exchanges calling cards, and passes round copies of his own writings.

 

Visiting Cards

The visiting card is an especially good example of paper as a form of social interaction. Leaving a card is an important part of the ritual of calling on ones neighbours. It was considered ill-manners to visit someone new without first having left a card introducing oneself. Boswell for example on Sunday 28 November leaves his "full card at Northumb. House". This would be his most formal card with a complete introduction. However, even the act leaving a card was fraught with the danger of potential social faux pas. There was strict etiquette surrounding the visiting card. They were different sizes for men and women. Social rules governed what one could or could not put on a card and when it was appropriate to leave one. All this is important because, as a method of initial introduction, the card becomes an extension of the self. The absent person is judged on the calling card, its quality and whether the correct etiquette has been obeyed. Therefore, visiting cards were often engraved with an elegant design. It was extremely important to make a good first impression. Boswell is very well aware throughout his journal of the performative nature of polite society. 

 

This blog provides a good guide to the etiquette of the calling card:

http://historyandotherthoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/etiquette-of-visiting-cards.html 

 

 

The Letter of Introduction

'A Letter of Introduction' (Image 6)

This early 19th Century painting by Sir David Wilkes seems reminiscent of Boswell's rather uncertain arrival in London. Here the paper acts as an intermediary. Until the older gentleman has opened it and verified the young man's connections, he remains suspicious. Again, the rules of etiquette seem to have been disrupted. The old man still seems half dressed and looks unready to receive visitors. His disgruntled expression and the nervous and uncomfortable look on the young man's face suggest he has arrived at an inappropriate time, obviously without having first left a calling card to introduce himself.

 

Business Cards 

 

Business cards also play a similar role in eighteenth century life: just as the calling card could be said to announce the quality of the person so business cards were used to demonstrate the quality of a business. Advertising becomes increasingly important during the century as society moves towards a modern capitalist market and the idea of competition becomes significant. Here are some examples of eighteenth century business cards. One can see how finely and complexly they were illustrated but these are not only used by high-end businesses. 

 

Two cards for different lamplighter businesses:

 

(Image 7)                                                                                           (Image 8)

Even people in very low status jobs, like this night cartman, would have a business card:

 

(Image 9)

These designs would have been fairly expensive and the fact that they were so incredibly ornate demonstrates that importance placed upon this type of promotion.

 

Here are some cards from superior establishments, a fine Tea shop and a purveyor of Wigs :

 

(Image 10)                                                                                                                      (Image 11)

 


 

Paper and the Modern Literary Market

 

Newspaper  

For Boswell, paper is very much part of his experience of the public space. Reading the newspaper, for example, in the coffee house was a key place of social exchange for him (to read more about coffee houses, visit Coffee), a place of intellectual dialogue on social and political matters. This is stimulated by the spread of ideas, enabled by the newspaper, as a platform for social commentary and a new space for writers to publish essays and poetry. 

Innovations in creating different, cheaper qualities of paper was important in the development of newsprint, leading up to the 'Daily Courant' in 1702, the first newspaper to be published daily in London.

The first issue of The Spectator, March 1st, 1711

'The Spectator', first published in 1711, was a very significant journal of the time and one which Boswell admired greatly. (Image 12)

 

Books and the Novel


A product of the rapid expansion of the middle classes in the seventeenth century was that, by 1700, there was the firm foundations of the modern literary market. Books had become important commodities within this society.

 

One of the main demands upon the paper industry was the rise of the novel. The rise of the middle classes meant that people had far more leisure time and this was often spent reading. Middle class women especially, who were now expected not to work, were an important market and thus novel-reading was often gendered as a feminine activity.

Importantly, people began to own books.

 The business card for an eighteenth century bookshop. (Image 13)

They were affordable. The covers could be made from cheap cardboard to innovations in the technique of making pasteboard, which was being “produced in England by 1700” (Hills 49). Developments in the industry meant that decent quality paper was easier to produce.

However, owning and reading a book, previously very much a luxury item, was still a relatively new experience. Laurence Sterne in Tristram Shandy plays with the book as a physical object, engaging and distorting people's expectation of a novel form. He uses squiggles and lines as illustrations; he includes black pages, empty chapters or chapters with just one sentence. 

 

Page from the first edition, 1759.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    Marbled Page from the First Edition of Tristram Shandy (Image 14) 

 

 

"You will no more be able to penetrate the moral of the next marbled page (motely emblem of my work!)"

 This marbled page appears in Volume III of the work. Marbled paper was a technique relatively unknown in England at the time of publication. Therefore this would be especially exotic to the reader. In the early editions, the effect also had to be produced by hand, meaning each edition would be slightly different, just as each reader's experiences and impressions of the book as a whole would be different. 

 


Arts and Crafts

 

 

Ladies and the Polite Arts

 

Fashionable stationery shops began to open in the late 1700s in response to the increased demand for artists materials. High quality paper became important due to the increased popularity of watercolours in the late eighteenth century. Rudolph Ackermann for example opened a drawing academy, later to become the ‘Repository of Arts’, in London in 1795 where he sold “drawing supplies as well as fancy paper goods” (Hills 48).

 

A colour plate illustrating Ackermann's gallery

  (Image 15)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This image portrays Ackermann’s gallery as a space for fashionable people. Their wealth is demonstrated by the bright clothes. Significantly this is a shop for both ladies and gentlemen. However, the perceived difference between the artistic endeavours of men and women can be read in the preface to Ackermann's magazine, named after his gallery, The Artist’s Repository and Drawing Magazine exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branches, in five volumes, is a collection of lectures on the ‘polite arts’, written between 1784 and 1794.

                                                                                                          The Preface states:


 

       (Image 16)                                      

 

 Although “young persons of both sexes” were encouraged to pursue these polite arts, only the work of men seems to be taken seriously because of their supposed superior "judgment" and taste.

Use of paper in art therefore can be used to perform gender and class. Ladies of the middle and upper classes had a great deal of leisure time and it was expected that these hours, between social engagements, were filled with "the polite arts", for example singing, practising a musical instrument, embroidery, sketching and other arts. .“During this period, learning how to draw was considered part of a good education, especially for young ladies” (Hills 48). These womanly accomplishments can be seen performed by characters throughout the work of Jane Austen. 

Art deemed acceptably for a lady of this class tended to involve more craft work, hence through examining use of paper, one can examine women’s art and education in the eighteenth century. The crafts pursued by women, though considered desirable and genteel accomplishments, were not viewed as proper art, but more as a way of filling leisure time. Here one can see an important distinction drawn between the public and private sphere, where women's use of paper is mainly confined to the private sphere.

 

Paper filigree, or quillwork, was a popular pastime for fashionable ladies in the second half of the eighteenth century.

 

The 1785 volume of The fashionable magazine; or, Lady's and gentleman's repository of taste, elegance, and novelty contains this article on paper filigree, which makes it very clear that this is an occupation aimed at “the fair sex”.This is very much an art form of the private sphere: it involves decorating household items. This magazine suggests “tea-caddies, inkstands, toilettes and other boxes, chimney-pieces, frames and picture-ornaments, work-bags or baskets, screens, cabinets, &c.”

 

:

 

 

 

The mention of “royal offspring” probably refers to George III’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, who enjoyed filigree as a pastime. 

As an art form, though it requires some skill, it needs little thought or imagination. Many ladies used the patterns provided in fashionable magazines or books to copy designs. Indeed Mr Styart provides a pattern for a filigree fire screen for ladies to copy. It is seen as an attractive accomplishment but not as serious art.

 

It is these sorts of accomplishment which Mary Wollstonecraft labels in A Vindication of the Rights of Women as "useless skill, to exhibit their natural or affected graces" (Wollstonecraft 52)

 

Here is an example of 18th Century Rolled Paper Tea Caddy:

 

(Image 17) 

 

Visit this website for a look at a beautiful eighteenth century filigree cabinet:

http://austenonly.com/2011/11/03/ladies-accomplishments-a-late-18th-century-paper-filigree-work-cabinet/

 

Flora-Delanica 

 

An example of a woman who did achieve acclaim through paper craft is Mrs Mary Granville Pendarves Delany. Mrs Delany began to make paper colleges of flowers, which she called ‘paper-mosaicks’, at the age of 72. After the death of her second husband in 1768, she wanted a new way of occupying her time. She used coloured papers, and skills she had learnt from her lessons in making paper silhouettes, to create extraordinarily detailed and accurate representations of flowers. She produced nearly a thousand of these. Sir Joseph Banks acknowledged their impressive level of botanical accuracy.

 

 

(Asphodil Lily Image 18)                                            (Winter Cherry Image 19)                         (Passiflora laurifolia Image 20)

 

In order to achieve these incredible portraits, Mrs Delany had to pay extremely close attention to the material qualities of the paper, for example the variant shades, which she also layered to create even more colour effects, and the texture of the paper surface. A sheet of handmade paper would have an uneven surface, which she embraced within her collages to create the effects of different textures. The flower of Passiflora laurifolia, above, is made from over 230 individual strips of paper.

 

However impressive Mrs Delany’s flowers undoubtedly are, Germaine Greer echoes Wollstonecraft's sentiments, in an article in The Guardian:

 

“Women have frittered their lives away stitching things for which there is no demand ever since vicarious leisure was invented. Mrs Delaney was spending hours of concentration making effigies of flowers out of bits of coloured paper mounted on black card as long ago as 1771. Why didn't she just paint them? You can see her paper mosaics in the Enlightenment gallery of the British Museum, if you insist, but be warned. You could end up profoundly depressed by yet more evidence that, for centuries, women have been kept busy wasting their time.”

 

Making silhouettes

 

Silhouette portraits became very fashionable during the eighteenth century.

 

With a silhouette, or paper shade, even the lower classes were able to have a cheap form of portrait. The advantage of this is that it is extremely cheap, requiring no expensive oil paints or high quality paper, and very quick; it can be literally drawn with scissors. This is a direct engagement with the material of paper. So easy were they to produce that “[t]he silhouette soon became a cheap and cheerful sideshow entertainment” (Sansom 163). Itinerant silhouette artists would travel around fairs and markets, often only charging a penny for their work. The speed and accuracy of the silhouette, coupled with the way in which people engaged with them as portable miniature portraits, leads them to be read as an early predecessor to the photograph.

 

The act of taking a silhouette, as a form of portrait which can be achieved simply by cutting the shape from a sheet of paper, begins to undermine an elitist portrait tradition.

This fascination with the silhouette seems to have transcended class. They were very popular among upper and middle classes; fashionable young ladies were often taught how to trace silhouettes. Therefore, even within what could be considered a universal art form, there were hierarchies. Superior silhouettes were not cut: rather they were traced and then painted. This allowed the portraits to be more detailed as the artists built up different layers of paint. Interestingly, the more superior silhouettes dispense with paper altogether for the finished product: instead the portraits are painted onto other materials, for example plaster or glass.

 

 

 

(Image 21)

 

 

John Miers, c.1785-90. Painted on plaster. Set in a hammered brass frame. 3 ½” x 2 ½” inside frame

(Image 22)

  Figure 3 

  Unknown artist, c 1785. Painted on paper. Set in later gutta percha frame. 2″ round inside frame

(Image 23)


Paper in 'It' Narratives

 

Mark Blackwell explains the rise of the it-narrative as a genre, attributing it to "late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Britain's changing relationship with such goods in a world wherein, by most accounts, more and more things were circulating, a greater variety of items was accessible to a growing number of consumers, and a ramifying sense of the life of objects was emerging as fashion, collection and antiquarianism conspired to associate things with temporal cycles, supply them with histories, endow them with life, and thus fate them to death ... or perhaps perpetual transformation (re-purposing, recycling)" (xiv, Introduction to British It-Narratives

 

Paper as an object lends itself very well to this type of narrative. Not only is it an object which was widely available to a large section of society but it also embodies this state of "perpetual transformation". The authors are able to experiment with the essential paradox of paper, the durability and transcendental nature of the printed word coupled with the paper itself as a vulnerable material, easily damaged and subject to natural decay. This fascination regarding paper-making and paper as a material to be recycled and reused is evident in many 'It' narratives of the time.

 

  • ‘The Adventures of a Robinson Crusoe. Written by Itself’ was written in 1799-1800 and published in The Young Gentleman’s and Lady’s Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge, Instruction and Amusement

It tells the story of a life of a book, a copy of Robinson Crusoe. The book is high quality, bound in red and gold with a beautifully illustrated frontispiece. However it is ill-treated in the hands of a series of school boys until “my poor remains were gathered up, and I was sold to a chandler for a penny.”

 

This expresses anxiety of the time about the use of paper for popular magazines and whether these are being read at the expense of well-written novels:

 

“Such is my history, and I fear it is similar to many of my kind. I had been bartered for apples, sold for tenpence and two tarts; but it mortified me most of all, probably because the event proved to be fatal, that a little flaunting pamphlet in a French grey patent paper wrapper, tricked out with painted flowers, and composed of more subjects than there are colours in the rainbow, however captivating they may be, should be preferred to that old faithful servant and long-established favourite of the public, ROBINSON CRUSOE”

 

  • "Industriata: Or, The Adventures of a Silk Petticoat

 

1773 – Published in Westminister Magazine

 

This is a similar story to The Adventures of a Robinson Crusoe, one of the material's downward mobility

The silk begins life of the highest quality, and becomes a petticoat for the Queen, however as the petticoat ages and wears, ‘she’ slips down the social hierarchy until she is worn by beggar women.

“I went with a cart-load of rags to the Paper-mills…we are all subject to decay; and so we entered the mill together, rags and tatters of all climes, forts, and colours…

Our transmigration was glorious; we set in dishonour, we rose in immaculate and pure unsullied glory. I went in a black rag; I came out a spotless, snowy sheet of paper. I was next purchased by the Stationers, who sold me to a certain Ovidian Captain well known for his Wit, Gallantry, and Poetry…”

 

  • Possibly the best and most interesting example of an 'it' narrative, related by paper, is ‘Adventures of a Quire of Paper’.

This was published in three parts in London Magazine, Or Gentlemen’s Monthly Intelligencein 1779. 

 

The narrator of the story begins life as a thistle but is then ploughed up and regrown in a farmer’s crop of flax. The flax then goes to the mill, where he is made into a piece of linen; according to him, he is a very fine piece of linen “of a most delicate texture”. Indeed so fine is he that it is agreed he should be presented to the queen, to be made into handkerchiefs, although some of the material is stolen.

The industrial process he undergoes is described in violent language, described as “misery”, “torture” and “cruel processes”. He is “drenched over head and eyes with water” and “exposed to all the rage of the sun”.  Interestingly, as a object, he is very receptive to his senses: being touched and stroked pleases him whereas being cut with scissors gave him an “acute smart”. Also strange is the fact that, although the linen is cut up and split between different people, it is “forced to feel equally” each part “in which indeed I was equally present”. This meant that at the same time it “enjoyed the unspeakable luxury to wipe those tears that sprung from the sweetest eyes and most benevolent heart upon earth”, it was also in a brothel wiping “the libidinous drops from the reeking brow of a debauched wretch”. Again, these descriptions are quite sensual and remind the reader of the close proximity and relationship the human body has with objects such as handkerchiefs. The story tells of the various usages of the bits of cloth, most of them quite disgusting and connected to the body, for example its employment as a corn plaster for a Duchess’s toe, until they are gathered “tatter after tatter, into the ragman’s bag…and sold to the same paper-maker.”

The story now engages with the process of paper-making. The rags were then to be sorted by “half a dozen of the dirtiest wretches that ever disgraced the delicate sex”. The machine itself is personified as a “monster” and the rags are the “prey”. Again the industrial process is extremely violent: “I was thrown between its gaping and voracious jaws”. Bizarrely, throughout the process, the paper states that it “possessed the power of separating my atoms form those that did not belong to me”.

 

Most of the rags become white paper, high quality for writing etc. and is sold to a stationer. However, some of the rags which were not properly sorted became either “whity-brown paper”, which is ignominiously sold to a grocer in Wapping, or “the paper that news is generally printed on”.

The white paper is purchased by two different men, a professional writer, struggling to make a living from essays and poetry, and a fashionable young society man. On his paper, he composes love letters, scented with otto of roses, or writes poetry and sketches, for as the paper somewhat scathingly says “he had, or fancied he had wit”. Their difference between the two writers is emphasized from the first by the different type of paper they buy: the “beau of the first fashion” purchases far more ornate paper with gilt edges There is a marked contrast between the lazy and careless way which the man of fashion writes and the earnest and intense style of the struggling young writer. The first writes only on trivialities, “Delia’s dimples”, “Lady Languish’s looking-glass"; he is part of an old-fashioned literary elite, still passing round manuscripts of his poetry to people of his own class and lifestyle, rather than condescending to lower his writing in publication, which would make available to the common reader. Whereas the second, intent on publication for a living, pens a serious essay on wealth, “on the vanity of all human schemes and hopes.”. The paper itself makes it very clear, in its tone, which style he prefers.

The man of society then uses the waste paper to “screw up his curls”, another demonstration of foppish vanity.

 

The different uses for the quire of paper emphasises the multitudinous ways in which paper was used in society and by the variety of different people. Whereas the fine Linen had to be stolen before it could be owned by people of lower classes, paper has a far more universal quality, owned by people in all walks of life. The paper itself is very much aware of the disparity in uses. Paper, though widely used, was still relatively expensive and therefore was reused as often as possible. The paper itself is very much aware of the disparity in uses and exploits the irony within this reuse. Thus:

“In the form of a pastoral I was rubbing the grease of a gridiron in an eating house; and as A kind Warning to Christians, clapped under a pot of porter just taken from the fire, over which a chairman and a drayman were quarrelling, and damning each other…Here, as a Picture of Delicate Tenderness, I was pinned round the fat of a haunch of venison, in an alderman’s kitchen; and there, as An Essay on the Powers of Harmony, strained over half an old comb, out of which a chimney sweeper’s imp twanged something like the Black Joke…as A Birth-Day Ode, Miss Fondler made me serve a shroud to her dead kitten, and there, in the character of An Elegy on a much lamented Friend, I was carved into a pattern for Master Wealthy’s christening cap.”

 

The satire here is produced by presenting a stark contrast in different uses of paper; its use as a platform for the highest kind of human behaviour, a space for people to write thoughts, poetry, spiritual reflections, is held up against the mundane and often disgusting realities and trivialities of paper's function in everyday life.

 

 


Bibliography

 

Eighteenth Century Primary Sources

 

‘The Adventures of a Robinson Crusoe. Written by Itself’. The Young Gentleman's & Lady's Magazine, or Universal Repository of Knowledge, Instruction and Amusement. London: J. Walker and E. Newbery, 1799-1800. Print. pp. 185-92.
‘Adventures of a Quire of Paper’. London Magazine, Or Gentlemen’s Monthly Intelligencer, 48 (August 1779), pp. 355-8; (September 1779), pp. 395-8; (October 1779), pp. 448-52. British It-Narratives, 1750-1830 Volume 4 Ed. Mark Blackwell. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012. Print. 

 

Boswell, James. London Journal 1762-1763. London: Penguin Classics, 2010. Print.

 

Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. 1759-67. Oxford: Oxford World Classics, 2000. Print. 

 

Thompson, E. ‘Industriata: Or, The Adventures of a Silk Petticoat'. Westminister Magazine. 1773. British It-Narratives, 1750-1830 Volume 3 Ed. Christina Lupton. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2012. Print.

 

Turner, Thomas. The Diary of Thomas Turner, 1754-1765. Ed. David Vaisey. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984. Print.

 

The Artist’s Repository and Drawing Magazine exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branchesLondon [England] : printed for T. Williams, no. 43, nearly opposite Hatton-Street, Holborn, MDCCLXXXIV [1784]-MDCCXCIV [1794]. ECCO. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

 

 


 

Secondary Sources 

 

Greer, Germaine. 'Making pictures from strips of cloth isn't art at all - but it mocks art's pretentions to the core'. The Guardian. 13. August 2007.Web. 11. March 2014.

 

Hills, Richard L. Papermaking in Britain 1488-1988. London: The Athlone Press, 1988.  Print.

 

Sansom, Ian. Paper: An Elegy. London: Fourth Estate, 2012. Print.

 

Twede D. and Selke S. Cartons, Crates and Corrugated Boards. Pennsylvania: DEStech, 2005. Web.

 

Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Vindication of the Rights of Women. 1792. London: Penguin Books, 2004. Print.

 

https://www.antiquesjournal.com/Pages04/Monthly_pages/march08/filigree.html 

 

https://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/m/mary_delany

http://venetianred.net/2009/12/04/flora-delanica-art-and-botany-in-mrs-delanys-paper-mosaicks/ 

 

http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/silhouettes-tracing-the-poor-mans-portrait-in-the-regency-era/ 

 

 

Images


1 - 4 Various Images of the Paper-making process from: "Papermaking. Plate I bis.." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Abigail Wendler. Ann Arbor: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library, 2013. Web. 11. March. 2014. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/did2222.0001.508/--papermaking-plate-i-bis?rgn=main;view=fulltext . Trans. of "PAPETERIE. PLANCHE Iere. bis.," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 5 (plates). Paris, 1767.
Wilkie, David. The Letter of Introduction. 1813. Scottish National Gallery, Scotland. Nationalgalleries. Web. 11. March 2014. 
7 - 11 Various Old London Trade Cards from: http://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/05/03/the-trade-cards-of-old-london/    
 
16 Cover to the first edition of The Artist’s Repository and Drawing Magazine exhibiting the principles of the polite arts in their various branches. From ECCO.
21 "Method of Taking Profiles". Lady's Monthly Museum, October 1799. http://candicehern.com/regencyworld/painted-silhouettes/  
22 John Miers, c.1785-90. Painted on plaster. Set in a hammered brass frame. 3 ½” x 2 ½” inside frame http://candicehern.com/regencyworld/painted-silhouettes/silhouette3a/ 
23 Unknown artist, c 1785. Painted on paper. Set in later gutta percha frame. 2″ round inside frame. http://candicehern.com/regencyworld/painted-silhouettes/silhouette3/ 

 

 

  

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