Paper Trail: On the Cross-Cultural Evolution of the Notebook
Roland Allen Explores the Millennia-Long History of Jotting Things Down and the development of paper
On the recommendation of Edward van Vliet in a comment on Noted I read this very interesting article of the beginnings of paper. As a collage artist the subject of paper always piques my attention. This is a great article and definitely entices me to get a copy of the new book. Paper Trail: On the Cross-Cultural Evolution of the Notebook
The article shows the cross cultural intermixing of the development of writing things down through the development of shipping and global trade through the Silk Road.
I assume that with the dawn of digitization, the 20th century was probably the heyday of paper and printing techniques so I have said for years that collage artists need to collect as much 20th century paper as possible before it is all in landfills or museum archives.
While we may not think about it too much, all of this paper collagists are working with contains an extremely rich abundance of anthropological and technological information that will become more and more interesting and mysterious and romantic as generations pass and the world we are currently a part of recedes into the mists of time as it passes into history and all history is made of documents.
We live in the middle of an extraordinary time of great technological change moving toward a world we cannot now possibly imagine or anticipate. The art we all leave behind will be the markers and the voice of our time that will become things to be studied with relish in the future assuming we can preserve it.
Oh right! I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe because I’ve a plethora of paper in my life. (I love the word plethora.) And, as soon as this election season ends, I hope to return to making a dent in it. In the meantime, back to writing postcards to voters.