Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 June 1897 — Blotting Paper. [ARTICLE]

Blotting Paper.

In England they use a thin blotting paper. Here we use mainly a thick blotter. Such thin blotting paper as is used here is chiefly for blotting leaves in books. Here we use on a desk a sheet of blotting paper 19 by 24 inches, the standard size, which may be turned over when one Side is pretty well filled with ink. In England the thin blotting paper is folded into a number of sheets, making a sort of pad, something larger than legal cap paper, and when a leaf gets saturated with ink it is torn off. Blotting paper is not new, but it was first made in this country only about forty years ago. Before that time we used some of the thin English blotting paper, imported, but more commonly to prevent ink from blotting we used sand, which was poured upon the written sheet out of a sandbox. The sandbox was a common article of desk furniture, as the wafer-box was at one time, and almost as commonly seen as the inkstand. It was made sometimes of tin, sometimes of wood. It was, perhaps, three Inches in height, and maybe two and a half inches across the top, where its diameter was greatest. It was something like a pepper-box in the manner of its use, but as to shape, instead of having a convex top, it had a concave top, like a saucer. The bottom of this saucer was perforated. The box was filled with sand through these perforations. When the box was used sand was poured from it upon the writing. A little of the sand adhered to the fresh ink it kept from blotting. Very much the greater part of the sand poured out lay scattered upon the paper. Lifting the book or paper the surplus sand was poured back into the box. Many of the wooden sand boxes were handsomely turned articles. ,The sand used was a peculiar fine black sand of uniform grain, brought from Lake George, in New York State. At the time of the civil war in this country blotting paper had come into comparatively common use. It is only within fifteen or twenty years, however, that it has come into the wide and very nearly general use of the present time.