Uni Papers

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.

But, if you discover that the purchase of handmade paper is beyond your means, what, if anything, can you do about it?

Doing It Yourself

As in other areas of life, there are those who believe that producing paper for their own artistic purposes would be so time-consuming, so expensive, so enervating, so super-specialized, as to preclude the primal concerns of the artist.

Simon Barcham Green, proprietor of the Hayle Mill in England and “a ninth generation papermaker with a degree in paper science” offers this sober judgment:

“…a professional outlook is essential. The handmade paper mill is a small craft industry. It serves other craftsmen by providing an important material. There is room for artistic papermaking-but not a great deal. So beware of the artycrafty approach; it should not be allowed to obscure the true role of handmade paper: that of a means and not an end in itself. This view will not coincide with that of some good friends making paper by hand in the U.S.A. It is a personal one, but sincerely held, and I hope the implications will cause no offense.” — Green, “Making Paper by Hand at the Hayle Mill in England.” Fine Print, Vol. 2, NO.2. April, 1976, p.18.

This attitude (which I respect) if held by all, would have long since removed certain basic, artistic freedoms from humanity, including the freedom to fall flat on your face when trying something just beyond your reach. It could also have removed the freedom to flounder, and the freedom to succeed. It may seem, at first blush, that I am trying to reinvent the wheel, to fly in the face of generations of knowhow, super-professionalism, technology, and the forward march of the machine. Yet, I firmly believe that an indescribable satisfaction will be yours, can be yours, if you master the simple (of course, it is complex) process of making handmade paper.

Numbers of us, and our little band grows daily in geometric leaps, prefer to manufacture our own materials-when we can-for diverse reasons, including the obvious one of financial savings. We delight in pitting our human resources against, and combining them with, those offered by nature and man to produce that which will serve our needs and standards to meet our various goals. The pleasures derived from making, building, and preparing your equipment, tools, materials, and supplies are truly satisfying.

Many users of expensive papers for drawing, printmaking, and watercolor painting have been deluding themselves for years in believing they have been buying and using handmade papers when, in fact, they have been purchasing mould-made papers (made by machine) containing varying percentages of rag content. (The differences between machine-made, mould-made, and handmade papers will be explained later.)

Show a prospective customer a deckle edge and whisper, “rag content,” and you have a buyeralbeit an ignorant one. Yet, there is nothing wrong with mould-made paper; some of my best prints were and are made on it, and many of my best friends-to overwork an overworked cliche-still use Antique Laid, German Copperplate, English Etching, Arches, Rives BFK, and other mould-made paper for prints, drawings, and watercolors and are delighted with their results. Compare any mould-made paper with handmade, however, and a different story results, which will unfold as we continue.

In the not-too-distant past, there was a plentiful supply of inexpensive handmade paper. Mills employed highly skilled craftsmen to replenish their stocks of paper for sale around the world. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of these old paper mills have closed down, victims of the technological revolution, for lack of young recruits to the craft, rising costs, inflation, and steadily decreasing profit margins.

In 1886, Charles Thomas Davis wrote, “There is now so little handmade paper produced in the United States that a chapter devoted to the details of its manufacture is really of no practical value…” Except for a gaggle of handmade paper mills in various countries, including the United States and Canada, Mr. Davis’ statement still standsthough it appears to be threatened by the present rediscovery of paper and pulp as mediums for artists.

Current economic realities have forced the small number of mills in operation in North America to price their handmade papers at high levels. In defense of present-day costs of handmade paper, here are some observations by Henry Morris, papermaker, printer, publisher, and sole proprietor of the well known and highly esteemed Bird & Bull Press: “Actually, the New York prices of English handmade paper, as late as 1968, were too low to provide a fair return to the mills. I did a little research on the subject of prices and was surprised to learn that when adjusted to real purchasing power, the price of a ream of 20 x 25 inch handmade paper was actually 30 % lower in 1968 than the same ream in 1928. Since 1968 there have been several increases, and using the same yardstick, I believe this paper is now properly priced and includes a sufficient profit for the makers. The question arises as to whether the market will support these prices which, although high, are necessary and reasonable under present-day conditions.” (Morris, “Letter to the Editor.” Fine Print, Vol. 2, NO.2. April, 1976, p. 20.)

Given a choice, professional artists prefer handmade paper to all substitutes. A visit to any historical collection of prints and drawings will bear eloquent witness to the previous statement.

With the possible exception of one of Dard Hunter’s contributions to papermaking, it is difficult to find, in one volume, the complete story of the so-called “white art” for artist papermakers from today’s vantagepoint - unless the reader has access to a major library collection of rare and limited edition books on the subject.

Throughout the centuries, to this very day, people have taken paper for granted. It is regarded as one of the givens of society, as ubiquitous as rain, smog, motherhood, or oleomargarine. Being so obvious, it has long been invisible. If requested to “think paper,” most individuals will meditate on a sheet of white paper. Further, it is widely believed that pure, white paper (as with a certain brand of well-advertised soap) is the omega of papermaking.

How do you define the color, white? What images, what associations come to mind? The albuminous material surrounding the yolk of an egg; the fifth circle of an archery target; the purity and cleanliness of a well-scrubbed, white-enameled kitchen sink; the virgin-whiteness of a wedding gown; great masses of flour, sugar, and snow; Snow White and her seven little men; the white part of the eyeball; hooking a good-sized white bass; the silvery white of the birch; whitecaps on duck-egg blue water; whitewash (political and the Mark Twain variety); white elephants, both literal and figurative; the white-face of mimes and clowns; whitefish (smoked) for Sunday brunch; a White Friar and Whitefriars in Fleet Street, London; the American bald eagle; the white heat of anger and the fear-provoking White Horde; white-hot metal and the 374 foot White Horse of Saxon fame; a certain eighteenth century colonial mansion in Washington, D.C.; Kipling’s unfortunate “white man’s burden”; white nebula and the white noise of electronic music; a Canadian winter white-out; the White Rose of York and White Russians; January white sales and a leaping white (silver) salmon on the Kaniapiskau River; white sauce for madame and a man-eating shark for monsieur; white slavery and white supremacists seen against the background of the White Terror of eighteenth century France; white tie and tails along the Great White Way; Melville’s whale and whitewings (streetsweepers)-to list a doubleclutch of words found in the nearest dictionary. But enough. Let us leave this intriguing digression with the disturbing thought that white, in the eastern world, carries with it vast numbers of associations quite other than western man’s conceptions.