How are blotters made?

[Hamish Harrumph]

I ate a fair bit of acid 80's/90's and was always interested in the history chemistry etc. But never really thought about where the sheets of blotter paper came from. I don't remember ever seeing sheets of paper perforated into small squares in straight life. Do they have a legitimate use I'm unaware of?

 

[JohnWayne]

It was originally invented back when people wrote with quills and fountain pens. When you write with these kind of pens, you often get spots with too much ink in spots. You would use the blotter paper to suck up this extra ink without smearing the writing. A more modern use for blotter paper is among stamp collectors. After soaking stamps off of an envelope, they stick them between 2 sheets of blotter paper and put a heavy object on them. This helps the stamps dry flat. Blotter paper is also used in chemistry and for art purposes.

 

[Hamish Harrumph]

Were they perforating the paper in the 17thC and printing Albert Hoffman's face on them? Probably not, maybe Shakespeare's face.