ABSTRACT

Papermaking started quite late in Finland, in 1667.Published evidence regarding the appearance of earlyFinnish handmade papers and the history of the first papermill, Tomasböle,1667–1713, is limited to only three priorsources. The original Tomasböle papers are easy to find inabout ninety published titles written by Bishop Gezeliusand printed by Johan Winter.

An internet-based Paper Identification Database wasused as a tool for the documentation. Forty-nine copies oftwenty-two titles by Gezelius from several Finnishlibraries and archives were surveyed, and the papers doc-umented. All results—not only the Tomasböle papers—arepublished in the Paper Identification Database. The prove-nance has also been added to the database. Thedocumentation of the Tomasböle papers confirms infor-mation published earlier about watermarks and the poorquality of the papers, but it also provides precise informa-tion to bibliophiles and literature researchers about theprinting history of some of the titles.

The Paper Identification Database has been created tocollect data for the characterization and identification ofhistoric and modern paper. The data collected include notonly watermarks but also details of the mold characteristicsof handmade rag paper. Sheet size, coating, color, aciditymeasurements, fiber morphology, pulp type, paper sizing,and other components in paper are included in thedatabase. Manufacturing and context information, as wellas various images of paper details, can also be found. Thedatabase is available on the internet at http://kronos.narc.fi/paperi/, and access is free of charge.

INTRODUCTION

The use of paper in Finland was minimal prior to thefounding of our first university in 1640. The need forpaper increased when the first printing house was estab-lished in 1642 in the city of Turku. Still, handmade paperproduction started quite late in Finland. Not until 1667 atthe Tomasböle paper mill in southwestern Finland was thefirst handmade paper produced. During that time, Finlandwas a part of the Swedish Kingdom, where paper produc-tion started in 1565 at the Norrström paper mill inStockholm and 1612 in Uppsala (Vida Group 2006). Thequality of the earliest Finnish handmade paper was notvery high. There are several reasons for the production ofpoor-quality paper. As Finland was a part of the SwedishKingdom until 1809, all the best rags were transported topaper mills located in Sweden (Karlsson 1981). Anotherreason was the harsh climate. Finland has long, cold win-ters and it was not possible to make handmade paper whenthe rivers were frozen. Due to the fact that accessibility towater in rivers lasted for only a short period each year—afew months in spring and autumn—paper production wasnot very profitable and thus it received little investment(Karlsson 1981).

Most of the handmade paper used in Finland duringthe Swedish Kingdom period was brought in from abroad(Lindberg 1998), as only three paper mills existed inFinland before 1809 (Nikander and Sourander 1955).After Sweden lost a war to Russia (1808–1809), Finlandbecame a part of the Russian Empire (1809–1917). Duringthat period better raw materials were available, and sever-al new, small paper mills started production just prior tothe industrialization of paper manufacturing. However thetotal number of Finnish handmade paper mills was onlythirteen, which is very little compared with the 130Swedish hand paper mills.

As can be seen in table 1, the number of Finnish hand-made paper mills is limited as is the number of differentwatermarks used. When paper conservation educators at

Paper Identification Database:Characterization and Documentation of the Papers

of the First Finnish Paper Mill, Tomasböle, 1667–1713

ISTVÁN KECSKEMÉTI

The Book and Paper Group Annual 26 (2007) 53

Presented at the Book & Paper Group/ICOM-CC GraphicDocuments Joint Session, AIC 35th Annual Meeting, April16–20, 2007, Richmond, Virginia. Received for publication Fall2007.

EVTEK University of Applied Sciences, Institute of Artand Design, first created the Paper Identification Databasefor paper characterization and documentation purposes inJanuary 2006, it became clear that it was our national dutyto document most of the existing Finnish handmade papersfor this database. The National Archives of Estonia alsoconsiders the documentation of Estonian handmade papersa national duty. Documentation of Tomasböle papers is thestart of this project.

TOMASBÖLE MILL, THE FIRST FINNISH PAPERMILL

Bishop Johannes Gezelius started the production ofhandmade papers in Finland. He invited two brothers,Bertil and Mårten Obenher, to come to Finland from theUppsala paper mill in Sweden to make paper. TheTomasböle mill, which operated from 1667 to 1713, pro-duced poor-quality printing paper.

The paper is dark, is not well beaten, has uneven fiberdistribution, and is made from poor-quality, dark rag mate-rial (Karlsson 1981). The existing paper samples are easyto find as they are in books written by Gezelius and print-ed by Johan Winter of the Gezelius printing house, thesecond printing house in Finland, established in 1669.Finland’s first printing house, Åbo Akademis, also printedGezelius books on Tomasböle papers, but only between1667 and 1669. There are about ninety titles by BishopGezelius Senior published during the existence of theTomasböle paper mill, from 1667 to 1713 (NationalBibliography of Finland 2006). The titles exist in numerouscopies and can be found at the National Library, severaluniversity libraries, and at the Library of the FinnishLiterature Society. Not only Tomasböle papers but also for-eign-manufactured papers were used in Gezelius’s printed

books, especially in the editions of the1685 Bible (Lindberg1998).

In the 1970s Kurt Karlsson became the first filigranolo-gist to find and study Tomasböle papers with watermarks.Karlsson has documented this finding by drawing five dif-ferent watermark types from the Tomasböle mill and twothat he considered to be from Tomasböle.

Lindberg has published over eight-hundred drawnwatermarks in his PhD thesis publication, How PaperCame to the North (Lindberg 1998). The samples werefound in Finnish archives and libraries, but only six ofthose are of Finnish origin from the Tomasböle mill.Lindberg also studied the watermarks of different volumesof Gezelius’s Bibles where Tomasböle, as well as foreign,paper can be found, but was unable to document thewatermarks as they are in bound volumes. Lindberg foundtwo new and one suspected Tomasböle watermarks. So thetotal number of known Tomasböle mill watermark typesbefore this study was seven. Three watermarks were sus-pected to be from Tomasböle. Nine of these are illustratedat the end of this paper.

DOCUMENTATION OF TOMASBÖLE PAPER INDIFFERENT COLLECTIONS

As explained earlier, there is a lack of very precise doc-umentation of Finnish handmade papers. Thisdocumentation and survey of Finnish handmade papersbegan as an element of the author’s PhD studies.Documentation of early Finnish handmade papers startedin spring 2006 with the papers from the Tomasböle papermill from Gezelius publications. Forty-nine copies oftwenty-two titles from six different library collections havebeen surveyed. Watermark details were documented as wellas other characteristics of the paper. Mold type, chain andlaid lines measurements, paper thickness, source, datinginformation, and context were among the most importantdetails. Papers from several other paper mills have alsobeen documented and added to the database. Images fromthe bound volumes were recorded by digital imaging witha help of a light board one millimeter thick.

PAPER IDENTIFICATION DATABASE

The documentation of objects is a very important taskfor conservators. It is essential for a paper conservator tobe able to perform material and chemical analyses for iden-tification and characterization of different techniques andmaterials of handmade papers as a part of conservation doc-umentation. The documentation work done so far hasbeen added to the newly created EVTEK PaperIdentification Database found at http://kronos.narc.fi/paperi/. It has quite recently been presented in theInternational Association of Book and Paper Conservators

54 The Book and Paper Group Annual 26 (2007)

Table 1. Finnish hand paper mills, years of production, and thenumber of known watermarks.

(IADA) PapierRestaurator journal (Kecskeméti 2006), soonly the main features of the internet-based database willbe presented here.

The content of the Paper Identification Database isdivided into the following headings:

Basic informationType of paperWatermarkVisual observationMeasurementsFiber analyses and spot testsReflectometric analyses Acidity, pH valueInformation on paperIllustrationEnd use of paper

All headings have subheadings where data will be chosenfrom pre-selected menus.

Under the headings Type of paper, Watermark, andMeasurements, information about molds and mold markmeasurements, watermarks, and paper size measurementswill be found.

For documentation on papers from certain paper millsor papers found in certain publications, the headingInformation on paper is important. The manufacturer infor-mation, dating by written or paper technology informationpublication context, sources, and references to other doc-umented samples can be added. It is equally important toadd clear images of the paper’s technical details and water-marks under the heading Illustration.

The database was created by three students fromEVTEK Institute of Technology: Samuli Toivonen, PaavoPekkanen, and Samu Lindholm under the supervision oflecturer Aarne Klemetti. Visitors can do a wide range ofsearches in order to find relevant information.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Although the documentation survey is new (started inspring 2006), the first results are encouraging. Eventhough the Tomasböle papers are easily found in Gezeliuspublications, it has not been certain which of the water-marks really originate from the Tomasböle mill. As thepapers are in bound books, the documentation is difficult.In addition the poor quality of the papers makes the exactdocumentation of watermarks difficult. Only one mold-pair watermark type was documented earlier.

Gezelius typically printed a few examples of each pub-lication on better-quality foreign paper, but most of theexamples from Tomasböle were printed on poor-qualitypaper. It is very interesting to compare the same editionsprinted on very different quality paper. Several foolscap,crown, and lion watermarks not yet identified are foundamong the foreign papers (table 2).

Watermarks TB1 andTB2 include a bird theme,which is also present inTB3 and TB5. This themeis similar to the private sealof Bishop Gezelius.Watermarks TB6 and TB7,with symbols of a bottleand a bishop’s miter, arevery common betweenyears 1669 and 1672. Infigure 1, database papernumber 67 is presented. Itis from JohannesGezelius’s Jumalan Palvelu -ksesta, printed in 1669,from the collections ofTurku University Library.For example, paper num-bers 63, 64, 65, and 66possess similar watermarksin the database. This watermark, with an image of a bottle,is very common among Gezelius’s printed books. TB4 hasFrench lilies and the initials “JW.” The French lily was alsopresent in the arms of the city of Turku. The initials JWwould refer to printer Johan Winter. Typical to all thesepapers is the very poor quality of the paper. These sevenwatermarks are certainly from the Tomasböle paper mill.

Watermark TB8 was not found in this survey. The onlyexample Karlsson and Lindberg have found is on one let-ter. The watermark is very small, and situated in such away that when the sheet is printed, folded, and cut, it iscut out. This might be the explanation why this watermarkwas not found in this survey of bound books.

Watermark TB9 was found in two printed letters ofGezelius from 1702, but the paper quality was extremelygood and raises doubts whether it would be fromTomasböle. Only two examples were found.

A new watermark type probably belonging to paperfrom the Tomasböle mill was found. It was found inGezelius’s 1667 publication Ewangeliumit ja Epistolat, pageC4 (stored in the Finnish Literature Society’s library). It is

Kecskeméti Paper Identification Database: Characterization and Documentation of the Papers of the First Finish Paper Mill 55

Table 2. The Tomasbölewatermarks found in Ge -zelius books.

Fig. 1. A watermark possibly fromTomasböle (TB6), according toKarlsson, found in this survey inseveral of Gezelius’s publications. Itseems quite certain to be one of theearly Tomasböle watermarks. Theimage of the watermark looks like abottle, categorized as “P: container”according to the InternationalAssociation of Paper Historians(IPH) watermark standards.

documented in the database as paper number 135 and ispresented as watermark TB10. According to publishedsources, a foolscap watermark (fig. 2) has not been record-ed in Tomasböle papers. The Tomasböle mill was foundedin the same year that the publication was printed (1667).The paper quality is poor and very similar to that of theTomasböle mill. According to the author’s theory, the moldfrom which this paper was made could have been broughtfrom Sweden (Uppsala) by the first papermaker, BertilObenher. It may be that the first papers of Tomasböle were

made with “foreign” moldsbefore the molds withGezelius watermarks wereprepared. It is very unfortu-nate that no countermarks

with initials have been found. The case of watermark TB10will be studied further.

Watermark TB11, with a text of MORTN or MORINand suspected by Lindberg to be from Tomasböle, wasfound in several examples in the 1685 Bible. It is well-known that part of the edition was printed on good-qualityforeign paper, but most of it is on Tomasböle paper. Thequality of paper, including TB11, is quite good and light. Itis not known if the Tomasböle papermakers were able tomanufacture better-quality paper for this special edition.Karlsson and Lindberg have considered that if the text isMORTN, then it would refer to the papermaker MårtenObenher of Tomasböle from the time the Bible was print-ed. They also note that if the text is MORIN, it would referto French-origin paper.

As the published TB11 is actually a countermark of afoolscap watermark and the paper quality is very good, itdoes not support the theory that TB11 with foolscap would

56 The Book and Paper Group Annual 26 (2007)

TB1 TB2

TB3

TB4

TB5

TB6TB7

TB8

TB9

Tomasböle watermarksdrawn by Kurt Karlssonand Nils Lindberg. Not toscale.

Fig. 2. A previously unknownwatermark, TB10, possibly fromthe Tomasböle paper mill. Foundin the 1667 Gezelius publicationEwangeliumit ja Epistolat. Databasenumber 135.

be one of Tomasböle watermarks. Also the amount ofpaper produced with these watermarks and used in theBible would seem to be too much for Tomasböle to pro-duce. One example of MORTN/MORIN watermark ison paper number 145 in the database (fig. 3).

CONCLUSIONS

It is quite evident that the watermarks TB1, TB2, TB3,TB4, TB5, TB6, and TB7 are from the Tomasböle mill.TB8 was not found, and TB9 and TB11 are on such good-quality paper that they are unlikely to be from Tomasböle.TB10 with a foolscap is an interesting example, as it isfound only in the very first Gezelius books from the yearthe Tomasböle mill was founded, 1667, in equally badpaper as the identified Tomasböle papers. The theory ofthe Obenher brothers bringing one mold pair fromUppsala paper mill to start with in Finland is worth con-sidering. Although many foolscaps are found amongGezelius books in foreign paper, no foolscap watermarksimilar to TB10 has been found. It is not present in laterpublications, which might support this theory.

The survey will continue into 2007 and focus on papersfrom the Swedish Uppsala paper mill from the mid 1660sas well as on archival documents and letters by bishopGezelius written possibly on Tomasböle papers.

The EVTEK Paper Identification Database is a noveltool for paper documentation suitable for similar projects.As of May 2007 there were about 330 samples in thedatabase, of which sixty percent are of Finnish origin. Wewish to invite more paper conservators, paper historians,and others interested in historic paper to document his-toric paper samples from their own region or collections inour new Paper Identification Database. User passwordsexist in the database website. For access to the partner userlevel, passwords will be provided by electronic mail.Kindly send a request to istvan.kecskemeti@evtek.fi.

REFERENCES

EVTEK Paper Identification Database. 2006. http://con-servation.evtek.fi (accessed September 21, 2006);subsequently transferred to http://kronos.narc.fi/paperi/(accessed December 28, 2010).

International Association of Paper Historians. 1997.International standard for the registration of papers

with or without watermarks. www.paperhistory.org/standard.htm (accessed March 8, 2006).

Karlsson, Kurt. 1981. Finlands handpappersbruk: vatten-märken, ägare och anställda. FinskaPappersingenjörsföreningen. Helsingfors.

Kecskeméti, Istvan. 2006. EVTEK Paper IdentificationDatabase: A novel tool for characterizing and docu-menting handmade and modern papers.Papierrestaurierung 7(3): 19–25.

Lindberg, Nils J. 1998. Paper comes to the North: Sources andtrade routes of paper in the Baltic Sea region, 1350–1700: Astudy based on watermark research. Monograph series, vol.2. Vantaa: International Association of Paper Historians.

National Bibliography of Finland. 2006. https://fennica.linneanet.fi/ (accessed September 21, 2006).

Nikander, G., and J. Sourander. 1955. Lump pap -persbruken i Finland. Historik. Åbo.

Vida Group. 2006. www.klippan-paper.se/handpapper/ his-tory.html (accessed September 24, 2006).

ISTVÁN KECSKEMÉTIHead of Archiving Techniques UnitNational Archives of FinlandHelsinki, Finlandistvan.kecskemeti@narc.fi

Kecskeméti Paper Identification Database: Characterization and Documentation of the Papers of the First Finish Paper Mill 57

Fig. 3. Watermark TB11 with text“MORTN” or “MORIN.” Pos -sibly a new Tomasböle watermark,but only few examples have beenfound so far. Watermark MORTNcould refer to the younger of theObenher brothers, Mårten.