Sunday, May 18, 2014

Geeking out



I've been unabashedly geeking out on some interesting and great papermaking stuff online. First of all, this website, Papeles con Marca al Agua (Papers with Watermarks), is a great collection of watermarks online. It's where I found the image above. Text is only in Spanish, but you can peruse the images without a fluency. Check out these!

Two great blogs on papermaking that I have been reading are Paperslurry (written by May Babcock) and The Fiber Wire: Plugged in and Turned On. Full disclosure, Paperslurry has featured my work before - most recently here (!), but previously here. Both blogs feature not only papermaking, but historic insights and contemporary roles of paper, such as this recent post on The Fiber Wire on the new $100 Bill.

May Babcock is the coiner of the word "pulptype," a form of combining pulp painting with monotypes. Very similar to what we did at Magnolia here, read her talking about her practice here.

Finally, I discovered the Youtube videos series by the Hermitage and Matanhongo Heritage Center. They have a whole series of videos on processing flax. The brothers there, Christian and Johannes Zinzendorf, are also the authors of The Big Book of Flax, which has been on my wishlist for a while now, although I haven't had the money to splurge yet.

The videos go beyond just how to process, but also some of the history and comparative methods of processing from various part of the Western world. Check out the video below on breaking flax:



Scutching:



Combing: