Joys and Frustrations in Making Paper
If you feel at home with basic tools and materials; if you can follow certain recipes for papermaking knowing, in advance, that your paper will be unique-for reasons that will unfold as we proceed; if it warms your heart to know that you can save yourself many hundreds of dollars by recycling pure rag scraps of paper and matboard, worn-out clothing, and ancient linen tablecloths, then you may, in time, learn to savor the intoxication of pleasure found in papermaking.
If you wish to emulate Rembrandt’s experimental attitudes toward handmade paper (his dissatisfaction with the papers produced by seventeenth-century Dutch paper mills during his lifetime prompted him to buy German, Swiss, Japanese and French papers, and some from East India, as well as the specially treated skins of calves, kids, and lambs, called vellum), you will have to print the same etching, as did he, on many kinds, qualities, and colors of paper to search out and find an appropriate marriage between your image and its support.
Inevitably, you will spoil some sheets. Some of you will spoil many. Solving certain problems will create others. But, that is the way one learns to make paper or space ships. Frustration will not be your lot, unless you seek the perfection of a professional maker of handmade paper only hours after reading this or any other book. Obviously, as with most good things in life, including making love or wine, it takes time, grace, sympathy, and a little tender loving care.
