Papermaking Summer 2009

Spent as much time as I could between the other happenings to make paper this summer. I wanted to use pulps I had cooked and frozen over the past few years, but I also really wanted to try beating linen and cotton cloth in my Lander beater. I made one batch of beaten linen from 4 old linen tea towels. I also made pulp from a yellow cotton tablecloth. After speaking with someone at Carriage House Paper in Brooklyn, NY I decided to beat some abaca to ad to the cotton pulp to make a stronger paper for printmaking. So I had 3 pounds of pulp and other pulp that I had taken out of the freezer to use up.

It was great! Last year Bob added two windows to our old potting/tool shed and installed electricity so that I could use it as my papermaking studio. It was a great way to make the best of the hot, humid days we had in early August. Keeping my hands in the cool water helped a lot to keep me refreshed. Plus I love the meditative process of papermaking. I love that I have a flow. It took a few years to master my moves and now it comes so naturally.

Here are some videos and photos taken during the course of the summer:

This video is the beating of a yellow cotton tablecloth:





The finished pulp - ready to use!










cotton and abaca sheets of paper.






















This is the linen towels being beaten. You can see the fibers starting to separate.

Here is a condensed version of pulling sheets of gampi fiber. I used formation aid which slowed down the draining process, so cut all that footage out.





My homemade paper press in action.