Page:De Vinne, Invention of Printing (1876).djvu/146

136 a surface of cloth or felt, or of some substitute of similar nature, on which, in turn, another layer of felt and pulp is placed. When the pile is of sufficient height it is pressed, until all the water that can be expelled by pressure is removed. The two attendants on the paper-makers near the tank are engaged in the work of interleaving the web and carrying it to be pressed. This done, the sheet is firm enough to be handled. It is then laid upon a smooth board where it stays until it is dry. The operation of surfacing or polishing the sheet of paper, by burnishing it with a smooth shell, is not shown in the engraving. But this finish was not given to all papers. The neatly corded bales show that paper was made in large quantities.

This engraving is of service as an illustration of oriental book-making. These two pages were engraved and printed together on one side of the paper. The sheet was then folded through the centre: the folded edge was made the outer edge, while the two cut or raw edges were neatly stitched together and made the back of the book. This method of sewing through the cut edges, instead of through the fold, began with the use of the cut leaves of silk or cotton, which were used in printing the earliest Chinese books before paper was made. If the cut edges of silk or cotton were made the outer edges of the book, the leaves would soon fray or ravel out in threads; if they were made the inner edges, the integrity of the leaf would necessarily be more secure. Like other habits and fashions, this curious mode of binding has been continued when the necessity for it has ceased to exist.

Although this engraving was made in the eighteenth century, it may be accepted as a correct representation of paper-making as it has always been practised in China and Japan. Rude as this process may seem, it is, in its more important features, excepting that of pulp-beating, the process that was used in Europe until the invention of the cylinder and Fourdrinier paper-making machines. Nor is this process entirely out of fashion. There are paper-makers yet living who have