Paper Swatch Swap: Yahoo Papermaking Group
Every year the Yahoo Papermaking Group holds a Swatch Swap, which is an international exchange of handmade paper samples with recipes of how each unique paper was made.
This year, a fellow Louisiana-located papermaker Megan Singleton has hosted the Swap. I had the pleasure of participating for the first time and giving a helping hand to make the book cover paper. Who am I? Click here for my artist website.
Keep scrolling for photographs & details on how the handmade paper book covers were made.
Images:
Title Page.
Just one spread with paper samples…with my small contribution of paper made from cast-iron plant and linen rag. Cast-iron plant is a popular ornamental plant in the South, and the university just happened to be chopping it down and tossing it away. The linen rag is from Steven’s Linen in Dudley, Mass., where you can buy linen calendar towel misprints by the pound.
The sheets spread out.
Megan is pulling a base sheet of Black Arch Shred Half Stuff paper pulp with a mold and deckle from a vat. The cotton pulp was beaten for 2 hrs in a David Reina paper beater.
Couching (papermaking jargon for pressing/transferring) the wet sheet from the mold onto absorbent felts.
The second vat had blue pigmented cotton pulp.
After pulling a thin wet sheet, we used a hose (on jet or shower setting) to make watermarks down the middle, a reductive pulp painting method. The pressure of the water forces the pulp aside, leaving thin or open areas. Variable editions are great!
Couching the blue layer of pulp onto the base sheet.
The third and last layer was white cotton rag, also sprayed with water.
After this, the wet sheets were pressed and dried flat in stack dryers.
