cannthropology
WORLD OF Cannabis PRESENTS
Roll With It
PHOTO COURETSY OF BAMBU
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A double-wide, unfiltered account of the history of rolling papers.
leafmagazines.com
ORIGINS IN ALCOY
Humanity has been smoking herbs for millennia, but it wasn’t until after Christopher Columbus brought tobacco home from the Americas in the 16th century that we began using rolled paper as a means to inhale. “Columbus came back from the ‘New World’ to Spain with these kinds of rudimentary cigars wrapped in leaves and tied with string,” explains rolling paper mogul and historian Josh Kesselman. “They land in Seville, and the process of people smoking cigars in Europe begins.” Though only aristocrats could afford cigars at the time, they’d often throw their butts away on the ground, where peasants would retrieve and re-roll the tobacco in used newspaper. This practice eventually made its way to the nearby town of Alcoy, where its future fate would take root. “Alcoy is the true birthplace of rolling paper,” asserts Kesselman. Alcoy was founded in the 8th century by the Moors, who brought with them the art of papermaking they’d learned Alcoy, Spain—birthplace of rolling papers. from the Chinese (as well as
OCT. 2021
Left: The old Bambu factory in Barcelona. Above: JOB promo poster by artist Alphonse Mucha (1869).
the Arabian Acacia gum that would later be used for the adhesive strips). In 1154, Alcoy became the first city in the region to manufacture “mouldmade paper” – a machine-made paper renowned for its durability and surface texture – and over the next few centuries, established itself as the papermaking capital of Spain. “The Alcoyanos take one look at those people smoking in newspaper and they know that’s not healthy, so they decide to make a special paper just for smoking,” says Kesselman. “That was really the world’s first rolling paper.” It’s believed that a form of rolling paper was made in Alcoy as early as the 1500s. Those early versions were made from the recycled pulp of hemp and other textiles, and were sold as giant sheets that needed to be folded into squares and cut. It wasn’t until centuries later that they would be branded and take the forms we’re familiar with today. In fact, the practice of pre-cutting and packaging papers in a protective booklet didn’t come about until 1765, when it was introduced by a Dominican monk named Father Jaime Villanueva Estingo. Remarkably, the first 10 trademarks ever filed in Spain were all for rolling papers; by 1850, there were around 50 brands registered. The first and oldest continuously branded rolling paper company in existence is Pay-Pay (pronounced pie-pie), founded in 1703. Old-school Pay-Pay pack.
