History and analysis of transparent papers

Abstract

Summary Transparent papers have been made since the Middle Ages and their production and use have evolved since then through to the present day. The first supports, paper and parchment, were made transparent by impregnation with oily or resinous substances and destined for domestic and artistic uses. The beginning of the nineteenth century was a turning point in the production of transparent papers with the appearance of the first parchment papers and the search for new methods of production of paper. The papermaking industry discovered new papers such as natural tracing, imitation parchment and glassine papers. In this article, historical study based on published sources is complemented by an analytical protocol carried out on a large group of samples of transparent papers. Analytical results are compared with information from published sources in order to verify whether there is a true correlation between the two.