Hahnemühle FineArt GmbH is a medium-sized company with a long tradition going back to 1584 when it was founded in Relliehausen near Dassel as the Relliehausen papermill on the banks of the Ilme river providing pure spring water from the Solling. At that time the product portfolio included writing and foolscap paper. In 1902 the Hahnemühle mould-made papermill merged with Schleicher & Schuell prior to Schleicher & Schuell, Düren acquiring sole ownership of Hahnemühle in 1927.
In the Lower Saxony town of Dassel Hahnemühle consistently developed along the lines established by the founding fathers: market-oriented, customer-oriented and innovative. In addition to the Relliehausen/Dassel location today there are subsidiaries located in Great Britain, France and in the USA with a worldwide total of 150 employees.
Today the oldest German artist’s paper mill embodies tradition and innovation: we have been producing high quality paper for more than 450 years for all traditional painting and printing techniques. With more than 80 different paper qualities in our Traditional FineArt Collection we are the market leader in Germany and one of the three leading suppliers of traditional paint papers in Europe. For a numbers of years now we have been supplying our traditional artist’s papers in a coated version to creative digital artists and innovative photographers. The natural structure and elegance combined with the special surface coating for inkjet printers enables unique reproductions to be made displaying a worldwide unrivalled colour gamut and brilliancy.
Of course some changes in production methods have taken place since 1584. Our fine paper division has developed mainly because of the growing requirements in art and technology. But some things have remained the same. For example, our quality requirements, that are inextricably linked with the technical tradition of the paper manufacturer and the demands of our customers: painters, graphic designers, illustrators, printers, archivists, bookbinders or photographers and advertising personnel, art students and school pupils all use our papers and boards. For all of these groups paper is a natural working medium on which, for a variety of reasons, they place high demands. In a continuous dialogue with our partners from the artists specialized trade and the end user we can keep up-to-date as to what these demands entail, how they change, how we can improve our products and open up new market segments. Our current product portfolio is a result of these shared experiences:
The most recent chapter in our company history has just been completed in 2004: up until then Hahnemühle FineArt GmbH was a member of the Schleicher & Schuell Group. Since the end of 2004 Hahnemühle FineArt GmbH belongs to the Concert Group.
