This book attends to the most essential, lucrative, and overlooked business activity of early modern Europe: the trade of paper. Despite the well-known fact that paper was crucial to the success of printing and record-keeping alike, paper remains one of the least studied areas of early modern history. Organised into three sections – ‘Hotspots and Trade Routes’, ‘Usual Dealings’, and ‘Recycling Economies’ – the chapters in this collection shed light on the practices, materials, and networks of the paper trade. Altogether, the collection uncovers the actors involved in the networks of paper production, transportation, purchase, and reuse, between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries and across the central and peripheral papermaking regions of Europe.
Contributors: Renaud Adam, Daniel Bellingradt, Frank Birkenholz, Simon Burrows, Orietta Da Rold, Michael Falk, Anna Gialdini, Rachel Hendery, Silvia Hufnagel, Jean-Benoît Krumenacker, Katherine McDonough, Krisztina Rábai, Anna Reynolds, Benito Rial Costas, Tapio Salminen, Helen Smith, Jan Willem Veluwenkamp, Andreas Weber, and Megan Williams.
Daniel Bellingradt, Ph.D. (2010, Free University of Berlin) is Professor at the Institute for the Study of the Book at Erlangen-Nuremberg University, Germany. He is co-editor of the journal Jahrbuch für Kommunikationsgeschichte and has published monographs, edited volumes and journal articles on a range of book historical topics.
Anna Reynolds, Ph.D. (2018, University of York) is Lecturer in English at the University of St Andrews. She is completing a monograph on early modern waste paper and has published articles and chapters on binding waste, women’s paper use, and material texts.
Preface Daniel Bellingradt and Anna Reynolds
List of Illustrations Notes on Contributors
1 The Paper Trade in Early Modern Europe: An Introduction Daniel Bellingradt
part 1: Hotspots and Trade Routes
2 Selling Paper in Early Modern Venice: Paper-retailers and the “Libri da carta bianca” Anna Gialdini
3 ‘Unter dem Zeichen des Adlers’: Frankfurt as Hub of the Central European Paper Trade in the 16th Century Megan K. Williams
4 The Paper Supply of a Printing House as a Mirror of the Paper Trade in the Early Modern Low Countries: The Case of Dirk Martens’ Workshop Renaud Adam
5 Juan Tomás Fabario and the Paper Trade in Early Modern Spain or the Supply of Paper as a New Modality of Publishing Benito Rial Costas
6 Paper Flows through the Danish Sound, 1634–1857 Jan Willem Veluwenkamp
7 Networks of Paper in Late Medieval England Orietta Da Rold
part 2: Usual Dealings
8 Types and Sources of Paper in Late Medieval Finland: A Case Study of the Paper in Raseborg Castle Scriptorium, ca. 1390–1435 Tapio Salminen
9 Buying Paper for the Consulate: Insights into the Paper Trade of Lyon, 1450–1525 Jean-Benoît Krumenacker
10 The Usage and Acquisition of Paper in the Jagiellonian Courts, 1490–1507 Krisztina Rábai
11 The Paper Purchases of the Dutch East India Company’s Amsterdam Chamber in the Early Eighteenth Century Frank Birkenholz
12 Stationers, Papetiers and the Supply Networks of a Swiss Publisher: The Sociéte Typographique de Neuchâtel and the Paper Trade 1769–1789 Simon Burrows, Michael Falk, Rachel Hendery, and Katherine McDonough
13 The Paper Trails of Guðbrandur Þorláksson: A Case Study of the Official and Private Paths Used for Purchasing Paper by the Sixteenth-Century Bishop of Hólar, Iceland Silvia Hufnagel
Part 3: Recycling Economies
14 Material Sensibilities: Writing Paper and Chemistry in the Netherlands and Beyond, ca. 1800 Andreas Weber
15 “Worthy to Be Reserved”: Bookbindings and the Waste Paper Trade in Early Modern England and Scotland Anna Reynolds
Part 4: Epilogue
16 Afterword Helen Smith
Index
This book will be of interest to scholars and students working in the fields of book history and material culture between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries and across central and lesser-known European papermaking regions.