M4 - Chapter 4 Paper Making

A Note About Colour

I originally had decided to work with complimentary colours, red and green. I didn't particularly find this very inspiring. After chatting with Sian and Gwen at Summer School I realised I was enjoying working with black, white and one chosen colour. I therefore changed my colours for this module. It has made a huge difference and re-inspired me. The colours I like most from my research are faded, aged and sepia type colours, which work well with black/grey and white/cream.

Paper Making

I decided to use natural dyes if possible for the rest of this module. I started by making a white paper pulp as a base for paper making and then dyed this in two ways. Firstly with dried woad and secondly with onion skins. In both cases to start I did not remove any of the 'bits' left after soaking the white pulp. For the onion skin pulp I also strained the skins before adding to another batch of pulp.

I used a mold and deckle, made by my husband and this produced paper slightly larger than A5. The mesh used was from a camping shop and worked well.  I also used some firm plastic canvas for some pieces. Two books I used as reference were The Craft of Handmade Paper by John Plowman and Paper Making by Marion Elliot.

To dry the paper I spread the sheets out in a sunny room. I did not use a press for the papers, although this is something I will explore in the future.

4.1 Straight pulled sheets



 

4.2  I decided to use textures I had to hand including petals and leaves from dead heading, as the first paper makers would have.

4.3 More petals and torn newspaper.

 

4.4 Making a positive and negative letter. Not entirely successful but can be explored further.

 

4.5 Laminating using leaves. The paper held but the top layer need to be thinner.

 

4.6 Embossing using leaf shapes form on a previous workshop from wires.

4.7 Worked fairly well. I used heavy books as a press for the embossed papers.

4.8 Further embossing with rusty washers and screws.

4.9 Embossed with wire mesh.

 

4.10 String placed between two sheets and left to partially dry. When the string was pulled out it left a lovely texture and raised surface.

 

4.11 Layers of colours formed by overlapping different pulps and then pressing with mesh.

4.12 Colour change made by spooning one colour on top of a previous formed sheet.

 

Using natural dyes gave quite a pale finish making the colour change quite subtle. This could be rectified by either making a stronger colour bath or by soaking the pulp for longer. I like the delicate colours and they are a good background to work onto.

 

One difficulty I found was the paper tore if it became stuck to the mold when turning onto the kitchen cloths. The towels under the kitchen cloths become very wet and by ensuring the towel was dry or using dry newspaper this helped.

 

I enjoyed making the papers and look forward to making larger sheets and experimenting further.