After a rather rough nights sleep (standing atop a mini fridge) I made my way to the Ladies of Letterpress Conference. After getting checked in and scoring a bag of goodies I cruised over to BookWorks to check out demos and work of fellow ladies (and gents) of letterpress.
The first demo (how to make paper) was given by Frank Brannon.
Frank Brannon is a 2005 graduate of the MFA in the Book Arts program at the University of Alabama and is proprietor of SpeakEasy Press. He is a resident papermaker and letterpress printer at Asheville Bookworks. Above, Brannon is holding handmade papers molded from different types of foliage.
Mulberry bark is a great place to start.
Initially you want to gather a good amount of twigs, preferably of the same bark... but it's not necessary.
Once you've collected a good amount, boil them in H2O until the twigs have become soft enough to tear apart. Then proceed to tear them apart.
Once the twigs are torn you'll want to beat them to a pulp (literally) as seen above.
Once you have a nice pile of pulp you'll mold the paper in a screen where you push the water out so the fibers can bond and dry into a solid flexible form.
You can dye the pulp any color you please while it's wet.
After this loverly little demo we went for a mini tour of the BookWorks Studio. Join me for the tour on Thursday.
wow, interesting! paper is so cool
ReplyDelete