History of Quilling

The history isn’t very long, but provides you with insights on how and why quilling became popular with the rise of paper. Most places that have written about the history of quilling (which I will link to throughout this article), say quilling began as a craft sometime around the 15th century. The North American Quilling Guild believes quilling could have started a few centuries earlier. For example, Spruce Crafts believes it may have started in the 13th century in China, around the time paper was invented.

My Modern Met shares, “it is believed to have been created by French and Italian nuns and used to decorate religious objects in an effort to save money. The filigree was fashioned to simulate carved ivory and wrought iron—two very costly details”. Relatedly, nuns sometimes used gold-gilded paper(trimmed from the edges of books) to make the decorations look like metal. Spruce Crafts reveals quilling resurged in popularity in the 18th century as a "suitable" pastime for the women of the aristocracy. While Quilled Creations explains that this art form was popular in the American colonies. “However, based on the lack of historical samples, quilling seems to have lost its popularity during the late 1800's”.

My guess for the reason the history is so spotty and not many products exists from previous centuries is due to the malleability of paper. This quality of paper is great for quilling, because it can be shaped in so many ways, and inexpensive. However, this feature makes paper products easy to destroy if not handled properly. Today we have more resources to protect work from damage, such as sealing it with a glaze. Alas, this may be why there are not many older examples of quilled pieces of work made from paper. Quilled Wonderland has collected the stories of a few older pieces that survived the times.

Aside: You may notice that the phrase paper ‘filigree’ pops up a lot when exploring the history of quilling. Filigree is decorative or ornamental metal work. The metal flower, as well as the embellish found within the larger petals pictured is similar to shapes and patterns that can be quilled with paper.

Gold filigree intricate work from Portugal. Photo by Ss.analuisa - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47816424

Quilled paper flowers by All My Quills.