THE FIRST INTERLEAVED ROLLING PAPER BOOKLET

By Anton Mark Nelson

The long held belief that Braunstein Freres was the first company to release an interleaved booklet of rolling paper has only to do with their patent application. History's first interleaved booklet belongs to Austria, and most specifically to the great S.D. Modiano!

In 1894, Braunstein Freres (The Braunstein Brothers) of Paris, France patented a system that is now universally used for booklets of rolling paper. They even named a brand of paper for this revolutionary method of accessing single leaves of rolling paper from a booklet: ZIG-ZAG. Here in the USA, even if you have no interest in rolling paper, the name Zig-Zag is likely familiar.

This is the same system used for dispensing all kinds of paper, even facial tissues, like Kleenex brand. The papers are folded in half and interleaved, so that each time a paper is removed from a slot, or window in the packaging, another pops up, ready to be accessed. The brothers called this system "Automatic".

This is common knowledge for rolling paper enthusiasts worldwide. However, a year before this system was patented, a young entrepreneur living in Trieste, Austria was selling booklets of interleaved rolling paper. His name was Saul Davide Modiano, and the brand of paper he devised may be as well known as ZIG-ZAG.

S.D. Modiano chose the name CLUB, and released it in 1893. This date can be confirmed in the Italian history book, Trieste in fumo by Pietro Egidi and Claudio Grisancich on page 35. Modiano patented the CLUB booklet in the same year as Braunstein Freres (1894), along with several other brands in the same format. 

While this may come as a disappointment to the French, who have been responsible for nearly every advance in the development of modern cigarette rolling paper, the credit for this particular achievement must go to Austria. (While S.D. Modiano is known as an Italian rolling paper producer, Trieste didn't become part of Italy until the end of WWI in 1918.)