Disease-free paper from 'Paper Valley' destined for Venice. Unrecorded document.

[Paper Manufacture] / [Plague Passport]. Deputati Sanitatis Sp. Communis Tusculani. Riperiae Benacensis. Si parte da questo Comune (grazia di Dio) libero d’ogni sospetto di mal Contagioso le qui infrascritte robbe over Mercanzie per andar a [Venezia]. [Nove Balloni Carta …]. S.l. [likely Toscolano or Brescia]: s.n., signed 22 October 1721. [21.8 x 16.0 cm], [1] f. letterpress form completed in manuscript. Minor wrinkling and staining, small holes from having been filed on nail or string.
 
 
Unrecorded form certifying that a 1721 shipment of paper from Toscolano (located in “Paper Mill Valley”) to Venice was “free from any suspicion of contagious disease.” While ‘plague passports’ were commonly issued for people, livestock & commercial goods of all sorts, this example perhaps carried a greater urgency than most, given that it coincided with the Great Plague of Marseille (1720-22).
 
The letterpress form is completed in manuscript to indicate that 9 bales (“novi balloni”) of paper marked “GG” and 3 bales marked with an “AZ” monogram were part of the shipment which left from Toscolano on 22 October 1721. The form is signed by the Deputy of Health of Toscolano.
 
Toscolano is in the Valle delle Cartiere (“Paper Mill Valley”) on the western shore of Lago di Garda (“Riperia Benacensis,” or Riviera del Garda). The valley’s water-driven mills supplied Venice with fine  paper from the 14th century into the 20th century.
 
I have not located any other examples of this form (OCLC, OPAC/SBN/ICCU, KVK).
 
*Renzo P. Corritore & Luisa Piccinno, eds., Cinque secoli di carta: produzione, commercio e consumi della carta nella “Regio Insubrica,” e in Lombardia dal Medioevo all’età contemporanea.