Surfaced Sized Paper, or Sizing Paper - not with a scale, with chemicals

Continuing with the theme from our post last week " "Woodfree" Paper comes from ... wood ? or ...? " which grappled with the term "wood-free paper", here's another curious one, Paper Sizing or Surface Sizing Paper.

Got nothing to do with sizing, as in the dimensions of the paper or your notebook product. (which we make several of by the way, check them out here)

"Sizing" in the context of paper making is a term that evolved over time, and essentially refers to the application of chemicals and other agents to the surface of the paper - to alter or control how the paper interacts with liquids - ink & water.

You see in most cases, we don't want paper to do this :

To prevent this in the early days of paper making in China, they developed a semi liquid like substance obtained from boiling rice in water, this substance would then be coated on the surface of the paper to create a sort of barrier to prevent the absorption of ink.

As this technique traveled to Europe, paper makers there started using gelatin from animal sources for the same purpose.

So over centuries these substances went through significant evolution, but the purpose remained the same - to give paper better resistance to absorbing ink and water.

But why the term "sizing" ?

So we did some research - and can't be sure - but turns out in this context "size" refers to the actual substance that was coated on the paper surface. So "sizing" was the process of applying said substance to the paper, and Surface Sized Paper meant paper on which "size" has been applied.

While for the most part, we don't want ink feathering, but there are applications where we want the paper to have higher water / ink / color absorbency.

Talk to us about your product needs, we supply & export a wide range of paper stationery products - notebooks, journals, drawing pads, artist sketch pads, mixed media pads etc all of which have different end use applications, and hence a different paper requirement and yes, a different "sizing" requirement. If you want to develop your own private label or white label product, get in touch and let's talk.