For about a year or 18 months I made a lot of books. By the end I was getting v fancy and started making my own paper to fill the books with, instead of the storebought/mass manufactured printer paper or graph paper I'd begun with.
I briefly touch on papermaking in step 1, here.
Once I saw handmade paper and made a few books out of it, I soon felt there was no alternative, if I wanted to make artisanal books-as-works-of art. Which I did. I was lucky enough to have access to the right workspace for papermaking for about 6 months, and I made a few books' worth of paper in that time. Probably between 100-130 sheets.
Then I moved out of my parents' house, into an apartment which didn't have the right kind of space to make paper.
The right kind of space to make paper, it turns out, is rather specific. Open art studio space won't do; you need access to a source of water, either a large deep sink or several water-filled tubs, a drain (essentially, a laundry or mud or art sink sort of set up), an electrical outlet, a floor which can take getting drenched, and a fair amount of open table- or waist-height space. I checked out local art studios around me for studio space which often they'll grant community members for cheap and for free, but just couldn't come up with anything that would work.
I finished what books I could with what I had. I played with stamps and marbling and other stuff. I waited. I wanted to make more paper and more books. I had fallen in love with my finished paper pages, which I made from scrap sheets, often of drafts of my writing, which would otherwise go to landfills or waste. I'd experimented with blending up some pieces less than others so that words or writing would still be visible in the finished product. I just really loved basically every page I made, each time. I found handmade paper extremely beautiful.
Well like a year and a half later my parents went on vacation for 10 days and left me to housesit. The first day I went over and set up my set up.
I got started.
I forgot what a time-consuming process it is. And my first results were far from perfect. I had to remind myself of the process.
Still, some of the early inclusions I saw coming out in the paper were really encouraging.
This '13' was by accident. That's one of the best parts about making paper. It turns out so very beautifully and yet so much of what you see peeking through the paper is by chance.
I made a few standard sheets, to get back in the groove.
Then I experimented with botanical inclusions for the first time. A god's age ago I'd picked a bunch of violets and pressed them for this. So long ago, in fact, I'd forgotten I'd done it. I was very excited by my pre-planning.
I was having more trouble than I remembered coming up with even sheets without sparse spots or holes. I began to get more experimental about how I could deal with such "pours" (as each iteration of making a paper sheet is called).
This sheet is the most experimental in that vein. It actually wasn't meant to be a sheet at all, but me trying to strain the last of the paper pulp out of the dipping water before pouring it down the sink. (Paper pulp can totally block drains.) It wasn't enough pulp to make a whole sheet so I grabbed a scratch sheet, tore it up, wet it, and just saw whether I could use whole pieces of paper like large bandaids to join the pulp and cover the huge spaces in that pour.
What do you know, it worked.
I made paper for a few hours one day and about another hour the next.
Then I realized that what had held me up before, even when I had good space access, was how the process of drying each new sheet of paper tied up 4-6x as much of my supplies than creating each sheet did. And the drying process, if done carefully and well, takes 1-2 weeks.
All told I was able to make about 16 pieces of paper. Not all of them are usable, at least not in whole. It's not quite enough for a book, at least not a full one.
For now I will hold onto them and wait. And I have yellow petals from a summer chrysanthemum pressing dry in a wooden press -- for next time. I think yellow petals strewn on pages will be just lovely. Whenever that next time is.
Studio space -- after
Drying all the things
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On a side note in thinking about bookmaking: I started making book covers using recycled old fabric because I wanted to reuse it. And I started making paper in part to reduce the massive paper waste I churned up as a writer, some of which I emotionally had trouble getting rid of/throwing out even though I didn't ever look at it or really plan to go back and read any of it again ever. And in both these cases my goal was to make art out of trash.
In thought today I decided if I want to recycle fabric, I should do that...and paper, the same. But I think fabric isn't the answer for good book covers. So I'm going to move away from that going forward in book making. I think I'll end up with better product books as a result; less confused about what they are.
The only exception will be denim pocket books.
PS: Here are shorts of the finished, final/dried pages. My cat is very rude.
If I remember correctly he kept walking by it in a shop and finally bought it. Then did weird shit to it Rauschenberg is sometimes called neo Dada. Which means he's being absurdist sometimes. The concept of absurdism doesn't stop art historians from trying to tease out a meaning from stuff like this. In my opinion it's great that artists can troll critics, viewers and historians. But I understand how an upside down urinal or whatever is too much for some sensibilities.
These are awesome! The botanical inclusions are a pretty cool idea. Have you thought about experimenting with flowers other than violets or chrysanthemums or maybe some other plant matter like leaves or something? I was thinking that if you have a friend with a garden, they'd probably be more than happy to give you some material. Heck, if I had a garden of my own and I knew someone was doing this, I'd almost insist that they pick through it. Or, maybe you could try some wild flowers or something, but you'd have to check with your local and state laws, because in some places picking wild plants in general or specific wild plants is illegal. Which, is understandable, but also a shame, because some of the prettiest flowers in my opinion are wild flowers. Also, have you thought about making some kind of rack or something so you can dry more paper, faster? As for the covers, what do you think you'll use other than fabric? Sorry for the barrage of questions. This is just a really cool, ongoing hobby of yours and it's exciting to see how you approach it.
I'd love to experiment more with botanicals of all sorts. Really the limiting factor here is how long it takes to make paper and my limited opportunities to get into a good studio space. No point in amassing hundreds of dried plant parts if I may not end up using them for months or even years. I'd rather spend more time gathering botanicals once I know I'll be able to make paper relatively consistently and in reasonable volume in the short-term future -- otherwise feels rather like putting the cart before the horse. There are online resources about good plants to include. My main concern is what plants preserve well and what plants might be at risk for breaking down, growing stuff, or attracting bugs etc. So if anything I'd just do some googling to see if a given plant might not lend itself well to being included in the paper. New paper is very wet and very weak. It has to be pressed dry between layers of another, dry, highly absorbent material. For 90% of drying I use blotter sheets which are just thick, heavy, absorbent white papers. Each sheet of new paper is sandwiched between 2 blotter pieces. You can stack the new paper sandwiches on top of each other as you make them. When your stack is done you'll want to apply weight/pressure which helps force the water out and also gives your paper better surface texture. I have a very nice wooden press that can crank like 500 lb of pressure evenly over a drying stack of fresh papers. The issue I'm running into is quantity of blotters. I have probably like 200 blotter sheets. You have to change blotters in your drying stack regularly (I was changing 1x the first 3-4 days) because otherwise they'll start growing mold and once you have paper mold you just have to give up whatever paper stuff it's gotten into, basically. Once you switch out your old wet blotters for new dry ones, then you have to figure out some way to get those wet/damp blotters dry again, either so you can switch them back into your drying stack of new papers or start making new-new paper again. Seriously, that's the thing I realized this time about paper making -- how much drying of how many parts is necessary. Dry the new paper with blotters. Then gotta dry the blotters. Gotta dry old blotters every time I switch them out. In a day, all my dry new blotters will be wet and old again. My rough math is I need about 6-8x blotters for each new paper sheet I want to make. At this point buying another pack of 25 allows me to make...what, 3-4 more sheets of paper in a session? That is not substantial. Moreover blotters get damaged too and have to be replaced...100 more blotter papers doesn't feel like it would make enough difference to the volume of my papermaking to shell out another $75 now that I've done so a few times already. The paper will dry with the best finish/smoothness when dried under pressure. Adding heat is tricky; without the press, heat will wrinkle and curl the pages significantly. So for now I pull my press into direct sunlight, but in the AC inside because that is substantially less humid than outside (and, remember, mold) and I switch blotters and I find places to lay them out in sunlight and let them dry too and I wait. For the covers I think I want to do some more scenes and collages. I was thinking about what market book covers look like and they often have a scene or image on them. I thought maybe I should experiment more with that. You can click through to that post I linked above and see some of my collage covers (some of my favorites). I also made some newsprint covers and liked those a lot too. Who knows? But I am just leaning towards, paper to recycle paper, and if I want to recycle fabric, maybe the best way to do that is to re-use it as fabric. Not "paper" aka "book covers."
I don't know how viable it would be for you, but I rescued quite a few books from moisture by putting them speaded in a hermetic box with dry, powdered magnesium sulfate[1] or similar desiccant. It's quick to take out excess water from almost everything and can itself be dried quickly in an oven. Maybe it could be used to store/regenerate some of the blotter paper? Or at least make the mold less of an issue thanks to shorter periods of dampness. [1] - EDIT: That's the same as Epsom salt. I didn't know it had a colloquial name. Anyway, you don't need this stuff to be high grade.
Wow. Yeah. That actually makes a lot of sense. Heaven forbid you use something that'll only take more away from the paper in practicality than would add to it aesthetically. As for the rest, you really sound like you kind of got this stuff more than half figured out. How long have you been doing it now?My main concern is what plants preserve well and what plants might be at risk for breaking down, growing stuff, or attracting bugs etc.