Day 5 – Papelera Ecker y Moli Papel Museo

Day 5  – by Matt Burleson and Kat Santoro This Friday was the last day of the first week of our PIE trip, and visiting the Ecker Paper mill and the Capellades Paper Mill Museum was a great way to wrap it up!   We departed from our hotel in Valencia in the morning and traveled to the Ecker mill where we met Carlos Garcia, our tour guide. The tour started in the mill’s power generation area, with Carlos showing us the mill’s turbine and gas boiler. We then moved to the recycled fiber plant where we got to see the mill’s unique hydrapulper. Afterwards, we walked down Ecker’s cylinder machine; the machine was extremely interesting to see, and it’s operation was very impressive. Another awesome feature about the Ecker mill is it’s size and history: it’s a family owned and operated mill that consists of 32 employees! Getting to learn about and see such a unique process that operates in a very lean way was a great experience.  

After departing the Ecker Mill, we headed to Capellades to visit the Moli Paper Museum. The museum is housed in the Moli de la Vila paper mill, an 18th century mill that has been restored to recreate the traditional papermaking process. The museum continues to produce handmade paper the traditional way to this day! 

We were guided around the museum by Suzanna, one of the museum employees. She began the tour with brief history of the invention of paper and evolution of the papermaking process until the 18th century. Next, we learned more about the Moli de la vila paper mill and the people who used to be employed there. We were shown a small-scale reconstruction of the mill, which demonstrated the tasks of various workers throughout the process, which was very cool to see. After this, Suzanna began demonstrating the traditional papermaking process, beginning with the shredding of old cloths. Paper was originally produced using old cloths and rope, which was cut down to smaller pieces and beaten with large hammers to produce individual fibers. These hammers weighed several hundred pounds and were powered by a water wheel on the outside of the mill. We were able to see a brief demonstration of these hammers, which really helped give an appreciation for the loud working conditions that laborers faced every day. From here, Suzanna showed us how to make handsheets, which are produced by dipping a small wire screen into the vat, so that pulp becomes lodged on the top of the screen and allows water to drain from the newly formed sheet. 

She carefully transferred the sheet to a wool felt and explained how the sheet would have been pressed in a large wooden press. Finally she showed us how the pressed sheets were finished with a glue-like solution and hung on a clothesline to dry.

This experience truly demonstrated the amount of effort required to produced one simple handsheet, and helped us appreciate the technological innovations that we have in the paper industry today. 

After departing the paper museum, we headed to Sitges to check into our hotel for the night.

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