How to use handmade paper for art and design?

Various Examples of the Papermaking Process

Why Handmade Paper?

“Why make paper” – someone once asked me – “you can buy paper”

“Oh, you’re making paper! I did that when I was in Primary School”

Ahhhhh we papermakers have to put up with a myriad of comments from all sorts.

Why make paper?
Well, let’s look at this creative medium………

In 2000 I gave a lecture at St Cloud University for the ‘Women in Art’ course when I shared my love of the medium ‘the endless possibilities of using natural fibers that can be hand beaten, chopped, pigmented, manipulated and pushed 95% of the time – 5% of the time they do their own thing – that’s the nature of natural fibres!’

The pleasure resulting from making paper by hand can evoke a satisfactory sense of personal accomplishment, one that can satisfy a creative need that comes from working with a medium that can entrance and continue to be open to new experimentation – even after 25 years of making.
Today I continue to experiment by adding non-natural inclusions, by constantly learning new ways to use the natural fibres, and by constantly learning from my students to whom I pass on my knowledge; it seems this medium will continually keep me engaged.

Plant fibres, mould and deckle, pulp

Reading some of my papermaking books I have found comments by these authors that find the papermaking process eudaemonic to happiness……

Jules Heller: ‘Papermakers are a happy lot, a special group in love with what it does, sharing an incurable, contagious, high fevered mysterious disease with all friends and acquaintances.’

Sophie Dawson: ‘The transformative nature of the material and the cyclical process of papermaking are a direct source of inspiration.’

Marie-Jeanne Lorente: ‘Replace utilitarian paper with paper that pleases.’

Pressed

Magazine for papermakers

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