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How To
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Pick your own paper
Francois Lake |
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| by Liz-Anna Waugh A walk in the forest is a like a shopping trip into the most amazing craft store on earth. Not only are the craft materials varied and abundant, they are free! You don’t have to live in the Far East to find the material for making beautiful hand made paper. Your own back yards are full of plants that are suited to papermaking. And while you’re looking, keep your eyes and mind open for more of nature’s freebies to include in your projects, like dried flowers and leaves, feathers, bark, twigs, mosses, and lichens. When you collect plants, take along a plant identification book and a notebook to record what you’re gathering, when, and the location. Fall is a great collection time because cellulose production has reached its peak. The bugs have called it quits for the year so pack a picnic lunch and get out and enjoy the fall sunshine, crisp air, and beautiful surroundings before the snow flies. I have used many local wild plants with varying degrees of success. If something looks and feels like it might work, give it a try. Sometimes the fibre that is produced isn’t sufficient to make a good quality paper on its own, but when mixed with recycled paper, it’s fine. Half the fun of making plant paper is in the experimentation. Willow, cattail, iris, nettle, fireweed and various grasses all make beautiful papers and can be collected in the fall. Cow parsnip paper is almost translucent but the stalks are difficult to strip, especially later in the growing season. Nettle paper has a cloth-like feel to it, somewhat like hemp paper. (You must be sure to use gloves to strip off the leaves and seeds before stripping the bast fibre from the stalks). The feces from herbivores (moose, deer, and rabbit) make interesting paper. The process is the same as for any plant to break the matter down into fibre. The animal has already processed the plant material down to some degree and the fibres are significantly shortened, so it is usually necessary to mix it with recycled paper to produce a paper that will hold together well. The texture is somewhat coarse but there’s a certain appeal to a product made from such a base material. And you know something? It actually smells quite pleasant when it’s cooking - unlike cornhusks, they smell like the rot of silage! The main ingredient in paper is cellulose. All living plants contain cellulose, some more than others do. Plant fibres vary in length and thickness and generally, the longer the fibre, the better it is for making paper. Collecting is usually done near the end of the growth cycle when the cellulose content is at its peak, usually late summer or fall. The color and texture of your paper will vary depending on when the plant is harvested. I collect plants all year, using what’s available. Sometimes I dry the fibre to process later when I have more time. I like to collect the bast fibres when the sap in the plant is running as the stems peel easily then without steaming. This means collecting earlier in the summer. You won’t get as much fibre but it’s a lot less work. Raw fibres are classified according to their location in the plant: Bast fibres are the inner bark fibres and are usually the longest fibres. Nettles, milkweed, and willow are all bast fibres. Leaf fibres are a little shorter and are found in plants like iris and cattail. Grass fibres are shorter yet. Some sources of grass fibre are wheat straw and corn. Seed fibres are found in the cotton plant and locally in cottonwood, milkweed pods, and fireweed. The first three fibres are the ones you will mostly likely use in your home papermaking. The use of trees in papermaking is limited to industrial use. Some plant materials yield more paper than others depending on the useful fibre they contain. It’s a good idea to test for success before collecting huge amounts. Some plant fibres make brittle, warped paper if used alone but make a lovely paper when mixed with recycled paper. Paper made from bast fibres is generally finer and smoother than leaf and grass papers, which are usually coarser but have more textural interest. True paper is "thin sheets made from fibre that has been macerated until each individual filament is a separate unit." (The Art and Craft of Handmade Paper by Vance Studley, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1977). To make paper, you first need to process the plant material to remove the unwanted components that contaminate the pulp. Preparation of plant material prior to cooking depends on the type of fibre. Bast fibres must be stripped from the plant stalk. In the case of willow and other woody bast fibres, you normally remove the brownish outer bark as well. Stripping is most easily done with a fresh, moist plant but dried stalks can be steamed first. The material is then cut up into one-inch pieces. Grass fibres and leaf fibres need only to be cut, except fresh iris leaves, which also need to be decorticated before cutting (scraped to remove tough outer skin). Cooking the material in a non-corrosive pot with an alkaline solution purifies the fibres by dissolving the lignin (the intercellular glue that binds the fibre together as the plant grows), sugars, starches, waxes, and gums. The remaining cellulose allows absorption of water and promotes bonding. The most common alkali used for cooking is soda ash (sodium carbonate). Cooking times may vary but generally two hours at a simmer is adequate to break down the plant material. When it can be easily separated along the grain, it is ready to be thoroughly rinsed to remove all residue. To separate the fibre into individual filaments, the pulp can be worked on a board with a mallet or separated in a blender with intermittent pulses. The mallet does the least amount of harm to the fibres. Care must be taken to avoid fibres tangling in the blender blades and burning out the motor. Depending on the texture I want in my paper, I will sometimes add pulp made from recycled paper to the plant fibres. The pulp is added to a basin of water and stirred with the hand (hogging the vat). Using a mold and deckle, water and fibre are scooped up and swished back and forth (throwing the wave), lifted out, and drained to form individual sheets. As each sheet is formed, it is placed on a stack (post) with a couching cloth between each sheet. A ruined sheet can be returned to the vat by turning the mold over and releasing it into the basin (kissing off). The whole stack of formed sheets is then placed in a press or under a weighted board to squeeze out the excess water. Depending on the drying method used, the sheets may need to be pressed to flatten them. Sizing may be added in the vat or to the dried sheets to make it less absorbent. Unsized paper is fine for ballpoint ink, pencil, crayons, and block printing but sizing is not necessary in paper made for notecards or other craft projects. Handmade plant papers make beautiful note cards. But don’t stop with the obvious. I use handmade papers to make baskets and bowls, gift boxes, barrettes, napkin rings, albums, journals, candle lanterns, and for giftwrap. Ugly vases take on a new life with a decoupage of gorgeous plant papers, wires, and beads. Hand made papers add interest to collages and make beautiful backgrounds for printmaking. The color and texture of papers made from plant fibres are stunning in home décor. You can make wire-frame lampshades or cover an existing shade. Decoupage tiles, old furniture and trunks. Cover a wall. Create decorator-style file and storage boxes. Make window blinds, wall clocks, and oriental style room dividers. I imagine you could even make a really striking floor covering with the right finish. Collecting plants for papermaking opens your eyes to more of our world. The desire to learn more naturally follows as you seek to identify species suitable to the craft. And, it is so satisfying to use something free and renewable to create something beautiful. (Liz-Anna offers workshops on papermaking and other crafts at her studio at Liz-Anna’s on the Lake. Visit her website at www.hiway16.com/liz for scheduled workshops and more information.) FURTHER RESOURCES: There are numerous resources available on the art and craft of papermaking. Here are a few of the ones I have found the most useful: Papermaking with Plants, Helen Hiebert The Craft of Handmade Paper, John Plowman Papermaking for Basketry and Other Crafts, edited by Lynn Stearns Art and Craft of Papermaking, Sophie Dawson Papermaker’s Companion, Helen Hiebert Paper Pleasures, Faith Shannon |
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