Rotary printing papers
Rotary printing papers
Coloured paper is paper that has been manufactured and supplied by a paper factory as base paper and then subsequently made more attractive and refined using special machines or manually by colouring it using dyeing, painting or other methods.
August Weichelt, Buntpapier-Fabrikation (Manufacturing Coloured Paper), third edition, 1927
Coloured papers made it possible to render more attractive the outer appearance of objects such as book covers, albums, boxes or cartons in a diverse manner of ways. When making playing cards, rotary printing papers, thus named because of how they were manufactured, also made it possible to print the rear side of the cards with a fully identical pattern.
Aschaffenburg was the centre of the German coloured paper industry. In its heyday, four coloured paper factories competed for business in this Bavarian town. The great number of available designs were presented to potential buyers in small master books like the one shown here. It presenting different varieties and order numbers, which have been entered here by hand, thus creating the prerequisites for error-free delivery and avoiding false orders from being returned by customers.