The Surprising Paper Made from This New Hampshire Pondweed

There’s this weird paper I made from an equally weird-looking pondweed, while I was an artist in residence at the White Mountain National Forest. I spent a month up there in New Hampshire in 2019, hiking, kayaking, and exploring many plants for papermaking.

This is made from 100% pondweed—a species called Seven Angled Pipewort (scientific name Eriocaulon aquitcon).

There's only probably 4 sheets of this in existence! I put a few in the artist book, and the rest are single sheets I whisper nice things to from time to time.

Seven Angled Pipewort is a cool pondweed—why? It pollinates itself by attracting insects with a nectar gland top tip. BTW most aquatic plants are wind or water pollinated. Its leaves and roots are UNDER the water surface, and it has a straight stalk that rises above the water.

In addition to swimming in every possible freezing cold swimming hole I could find, I paddled around in a borrowed kayak (you know who you are, New Hampshire friend! Thanks again). I came across this plant in many lakes and ponds in the National Forest. Research told me that the pondweed is native to New England, and is pretty widespread. (Pro tip: always identify the plant before harvesting. You don't want to remove rare species.)

Plant papermaking lets me get to know a place and its plant life intimately. We've met each other by chance, I learn about them—where they live, where they're from, how they've grown, who they are close to.

And then it’s a "let's see what happens" process, cooking and pulping the fiber for papermaking.

This one took me by surprise!

Pipewort paper is remarkably translucent. Long fibers scatter through the sheet, and with a warm yellow-tan tone. It rattles, and is surprisingly strong, perhaps because Seven Angled Pipewort sticks straight up out of the water's surface, resisting wind, currents, and pushy ducks.

I left the artist residency with a whole pile of interesting papers besides this one!