The Fabriano coat of arms reads in Latin, Faber in amne cudit, olim undique fudit, meaning "the blacksmith (faber) beats by the river, paper disseminates everywhere." The motto emphasizes the extraordinarily fertile ground that papermaking found in this Italian town, capable of transforming a delicate handmade item into the most powerful means of transmission of knowledge that human intellect had ever invented, carrying Italy into the Renaissance. And beginning its early artistic evolution in Fabriano, the watermark reached a sophisticated level as a security element in complex papers produced for printing of various currencies, including the Euro today. To celebrate over seven centuries of this manufacturing tradition, the City of Fabriano –now recognized as a UNESCO Creative City– established the Museum of Paper and Watermark (Museo della Carta e della Filigrana) on November 5, 1984. Since its doors opened in the monumental San Domenico monastery complex, the museum has welcomed almost 1.5 million visitors. Availing its valuable collections of antique watermarks to paper and watermark scholars everywhere, it has established relationships with institutions, libraries, universities, and museums on five continents. At the same time the museum has contributed to the preservation of hand papermaking craftsmanship through the activities of its own master papermakers. They engage with the public by demonstrating traditional techniques Italy, Land of Saints, Great Navigators, and…Master Papermakers giorgio pellegrini School children, hands in the pulp, learning to make paper at the Museum of Paper and Watermark, Fabriano. Photo: Adriano Maffei, 2012. All photos courtesy of the museums unless otherwise noted. of papermaking as a living process. In the museum's reconstructed medieval paper mill, visitors may place their own hands into the pulp to attempt the craft. Opportunities for training, and intensive residential courses are available to students, teachers, and generally to those who want to deepen their practical knowledge of traditional hand papermaking ad usum fabrianensis (in the manner of Fabriano). The museum has recently constructed and is currently equipping a section called "The Civilization of Writing." There we find fully restored and functional antique printing presses, including two operating Heidelberg Stella presses, activating a working print shop. Classrooms are set up for calligraphy and illuminated miniature courses; a bindery is now in place. With over 1,800 square meters of covered area, plus the new 1,200 square-meter section dedicated to calligraphy, printing, and bookbinding, the Museum of Paper and Watermark offers the visitor an immersion of discovery with multilingual guided tours. The museum also organizes biennial award exhibitions dedicated to the paper arts of both graphics and watercolor; and has hosted conferences of the IAPMA (International Association of Papermakers and Artists) and IPH (International Paper Historians). Papermaking is a basis for new creativity, with new museum spaces meeting the needs of artists using paper as a medium for their artistic activities. These include the development of special paper with the master papermakers, and artistic residencies. Among the museum's newest projects is the Center of Documentation of the Catalog of Art on Paper which will house a collection of printed copies of exhibition catalogs of art created on or with paper. These will be digitally cataloged and preserved in a special section of the Historical Archive of the Library of Fabriano. Italian paper, of course, has never been confined to Fabriano and equally touches the histories of Amalfi, in the region of Campania; more recently Toscolano Maderno on Lake Garda in Lombardy; and Pescia, inland of Pistoia in Tuscany. These are all entities that have entrusted to their paper museums the task of ensuring the conservation of their manufacturing traditions. The Amalfi museum is the oldest of the Italian museums of papermaking, having been founded in 1969–71 by the transformation of one of the mulini (paper mills) existing along the Valle dei Mulini, immediately up the mountain from Amalfi, the city of that famous maritime republic.1 The proponent of the transformation from production site into exhibition site was Nicola Milano, scion of one of the proprietary families of Amalfi at the beginning of the twentieth century. Three mills were forced to close after World War II, due to their progressive decline in competition with other paper mills. Today, the Amalfi Museum of Paper (Museo della Carta) is dedicated mainly to tourists, who arrive at the splendid Amalfi Coast in large numbers. Its placement within a former paper mill in the Valley of the Mills makes it extremely picturesque. Impressive, too, is the presence of authentic antique papermaking equipment and machinery, still fully driven by the waters of the river Canneto. On view are an antique wooden hammer mill, a hydraulically operated, eighteenth-century Hollander beater, a seventeenth-century chestnut paper press, and a venerable, Maiolica-tiled stone vat. Visitors have the opportunity to observe the production of a sheet of paper drawn from pulp in the ancient vat. It is a measured ritual, steeped in tradition, almost magical, repeated again and again, provoking amazement. The same awe has been elicited at the Museum of Paper, once housed in an old school in Pietrabuona, where paper mills were long driven by the waters of the Pescia. The old mill Le Carte was built in the first decade of the eighteenth century by the Ansaldi family. In the second half of the nineteenth century it was acquired by the Magnani family and went on to produce, until 1972, highquality handmade paper that was marketed in about 40 countries worldwide. The building with its seventeenth- and eighteenth-century equipment, reopens completely restored in 2017 as part of a regional project called The Paper Road in Tuscany. The museum will house a 7,000-piece collection of paper moulds, wax watermark engravings, punches, and stamps, and will resume production of watermarked paper by hand. It will also be the permanent home of the Magnani Historical Archive, consisting of 600 linear meters of documents associated with the mill, one of the largest Italian business archives in existence.2 Moving further north to the shores of Lake Garda, we enter another Valle delle Cartiere (Valley of the Paper Mills). It is located near Toscolano, a site of ancient mills dedicated to the manufacture of paper to meet the demand of another powerful maritime republic, the Serenissima Republic of Venice, as defined by Francesco Petrarch. The Paper Museum was created thanks to the recovery of one of the production sites of the area called Maina Inferiore, Master papermakers creating handmade paper at Le Carte, in the first decades of the twentieth century. Courtesy of Magnani Historical Archive, Associazione Museo della Carta Onlus, The Carlo Magnani Fund. located at the mid-level of this paper valley. That mill, active until 1962, is now converted into a museum center naturally connected to the historical vocation of the valley. It also ties in with the active continuation of paper production at the Toscolano Paper Mill (a part of the Burgo Group) located on the Brescian coast. Among the paper museum's objectives are the retention of productive activities—accomplished through training taken to a new level of professionalism—and operating within traditional papermaking and associated crafts. The soul of this museum is the Pensioners Group of the Toscolano Paper Mill, which in 2000 yielded the idea of museum of paper. Thanks to the support of the municipal administration and important European funding, it has now become a significant reality. The museum houses a small production center with reproductions of antique papermaking equipment, displays of industrial equipment and documents, and programming of events related to the paper world. Italy, by means of these four museums, celebrates its extraordinary contribution to the world of paper. Of the four, two are parallel founding entities, Amalfi and Fabriano, and the other two, Pescia and Toscolano, were born, despite prohibitions, as a result of the fourteenth-century Fabriano papermaking diaspora. Visit these sites, but not just to make a journey into the past of this glorious manufacturing tradition. Above all understand how much paper, given up for dead at the dawn of digital communication, remains alive and present in the third millennium, as the privileged space where thoughts and projects take shape and can be shared in perpetuity. Not by chance, Francesco Stelluti, a Fabrianese scientist and cofounder of the famous Lincei Academy along with Galileo Galilei, wrote in a famous sonnet dedicated to the paper produced in his city, "It is fragile, yes, but it is worth more than marble sculptures, and in spite of himself it makes man immortal!" ___________ notes 1. Editor's note: For more on the industry of the Valle dei Mulini, see Giuseppe Amendola Amatruda's article in this issue of Hand Papermaking. 2. Editor's note: Thanks to Massimiliano Bini, Director, Associazione Museo della Carta Onlus, for this latest update on Le Carte and the Magnani Historical Archive.
