This book studies the early modern phenomenon of the increasing production and consumption of blue-hued paper, a material used widely in Italy as a drawing, writing and printing support as well as an ephemeral wrapping. Until recently researchers overlooked blue paper as an object of curiosity and worthy of study, often judging that, because of its assumed less refined fabrication and mottled colour compared to the finest contemporary white papers, it was a poor-quality product of lowly function and no particular interest. Close looking, a method of visual examination used regularly by a wide range of professional disciplines, is used here to examine a selection of surviving paper artefacts from the period c.1400-c.1600. Combined with a reconsideration of the extant documentary sources and placed in a broad historically-based synchronic context, this book presents new information and interpretations to enrich the nascent blue paper corpus.
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Foreword
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Sources and methods
‘Another book on the Italian Renaissance?’
Why blue?
Limitations of written and illustrated sources
Examination of original artefacts
Close looking
Desiderata
Chapter 2 Early modern European blue papermaking: fibres and colorants
The main constituents of early modern blue papers
Fibres
Hemp
Flax/linen
Cotton
Wool
Silk
Colorants
Woad
Indigo
Woad, indigo and indigotin blue
Chapter 3 Making and distinguishing early modern blue papers
Water
Mills making coloured paper
Organisational systems
Rags
Recycled textiles
Ships’ sails
Ropes
Recycled (waste) paper
New textiles
The procurement of papermaking rags
Quantities
Rag sorting
How paper became blue: fabrication of blue paper sheets
Prepared blue paper
Paper dyed blue in the vat or after sheet formation
Blued paper
Variegated (mixed fibre) blue paper
The fading of indigotin-dyed paper
Chapter 4 Drawings on blue paper: the fifteenth century
Primary evidence
Written sources
Drawings
Assumptions and possibilities
Chapter 5 Drawings on blue paper: the sixteenth century
Revival and diffusion of interest in Venetian drawing practice
Single sheet prints on blue paper
Drawings heightened with coloured chalks on blue paper
Portrait drawings on blue paper c.1600
Chapter 6 Blue book text blocks, notebooks, album pages and wrapping paper
Early sixteenth-century Venetian books printed on variegated blue paper
Paper for printing
Aldus Manutius, Christophe Plantin and blue paper
The decoration of printed books
Blue paper text blocks: the reanimation of the achievements of antiquity
Publishing of blue text blocks after Aldus Manutius
The Badile album
The Vicenza notarial sheet
Ephemeral uses
Ream wrappers
Blue wrapping paper
Conclusion
Bibliography
