By Ines Keane
Hold a sheet up to the light. If there is a mark in it, you are looking at an idea from a hill town in the Marche.
Where it is
Wikipedia places Fabriano in the Marche region, in the province of Ancona, at 325 metres in the Esino valley. It gives the population as 30,809 on 31 December 2017. It lists the Palazzo del Podestà, dated 1255, the Sturinalto fountain, dated 1285, and a cathedral from the fourteenth century that was rebuilt between 1607 and 1617. It also says the town hosts the headquarters of two appliance manufacturers. The paper is what concerns us here.
When did the paper start?
The dates vary. Wikipedia’s article on the town says Fabriano achieved prominence in 1276 as one of the earliest places in Europe to produce paper, and that its reputation for fine watermarked paper has been established since the thirteenth century. Wikipedia’s article on the paper museum says the tradition dates to the twelfth century. We have not found a source that reconciles the two, and it is possible they are counting different things: first production and first fame.
What Fabriano changed
The museum article says Fabriano’s artisans refined techniques learned from Arab sources, and it names two innovations: multiple hammer mills to grind the rag cloth, and a way of sizing paper with animal glue. It says watermark techniques emerged in the thirteenth century, first with wire laid into moulds and later with carved wooden or cast metal punches.
The museum’s own site gives more. It says Fabriano’s papermakers adopted a multiple hydraulic hammer mill to pound the rags, replacing manual stone mortars, and that they substituted gelatine or animal sizing, taken from the discarded meat of local tanners, for wheat starch, which caused deterioration. It says the watermark was a practice borrowed from wool manufacturers, who marked their goods. It says rags came from nearby places and from cities as far off as Florence and Perugia, and were sorted into grades it calls good, big, ribbed and decorated. The museum is describing its own town’s history, so we are reporting this as its account.
The museum
Wikipedia says the Paper and Watermark Museum opened in 1984 in a former Dominican convent. It says the holdings cover 800 years of papermaking, with papers, watermarks and manufacturing tools, and that it runs a medieval-style fulling mill to show how one was used. It says the museum offers demonstrations, courses and workshops. We have not checked the current programme.
A creative city
Wikipedia says Fabriano belongs to UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network in the folk arts category, recognised for handmade paper. We have not seen UNESCO’s own description, and the Wikipedia article we read does not say when Fabriano joined, so we are not giving a year.
Why it matters for a curator
Paper is easy to overlook. It carries a signature, a date and a promise on a certificate, and it is made from a few plain things: cloth, water, and skill. Fabriano is a place where the history of that skill is documented in a museum, and where one visible detail, the watermark, is part of the story.
What to ask before you buy
We have not profiled any paper maker, shop or workshop in Fabriano, and we will not name one we cannot source. If a sheet or a notebook is sold as Fabriano paper, ask what the fibre is: cotton rag, wood pulp or something else. Ask whether it was made by hand, on a mould, or by machine. Ask whether the watermark is real, formed in the sheet, or printed on it. Ask how the sheet is sized. Ask who made it, and where. We are not recommending any producer.
Roam first. Shop later.
Marche makers can find out what’s involved at /sell-with-sephari/