Japanese paper

So. Japanese papermaking. Yeah.
In my experience with many aspects of fiber art, I usually get a grasp of many hand processes fairly quickly. Japanese papermaking was not one of those things.



Just looking at the difference in Claudia's demo sheet and my sheet, you can see the fibers are supposed to line up and distribute very evenly.



[My poor first attempt at Japanese papermaking]















[Claudia's demo-- note the difference.]

I made about twenty sheets of kozo paper (at least they looked like ok sheets to me) using a sugeta and then switched to western papermaking using the Thai kozo in the vat. I still have plenty of kozo (in my freezer) ready to make more sheets and I am determined to get a handle on this using the sugeta.














[Both kozo pages, on the left is japanese papermaking, right is made with a western mould and deckle.]

Experiments

These photos are of experiments with abaca. I use a lot of cartographic imagery in my work, and as I have mentioned before, I digitally print on handmade paper using a desktop printer. Recently, Claudia has taught me her method of including string when pulling a sheet of paper as well as laminating string and other things between two layers of overbeaten pulp to create interesting effects.

[My influences here are my map collection- specifically a map of the ocean, and stick maps of the Marshall Islands]


























[This is another experiment with abaca. Sewing thread and spun lokta paper have been laminated between two sheets. The dark color of the lokta paper bled into the abaca- but I love the effect.]














[These are some "recycled" pieces.]

Beater Tests

"Paper is designed in the beater." Claudia has emphasized that the beating of pulp is the largest part of designing paper. In order understand how to use the beater to help create a specific paper, it is common practice to do beater testing. This way, one can see how a pulp is affected by the length of time a pulp is beaten and by other variables like the level/number at which the beater is set and how hard it is beating.



[Claudia and Cheryl look at Tallu Schuyler's beater and fiber testing at the Appalachian center for craft. Her BFA research on handmade paper is a wonderful resource for seeing how many different fibers -including plants from the Craft Center- are made into paper.]

Claudia and I started the beater and waited for the pulp to be broken up a bit.

To do our beater test, we used a mould and deckle box and poured the same amount of pulp from the beater into the box and made a sheet of paper at 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 min as the beater continued to beat the pulp.

Papers were pressed and then restraint-dried on windows, or air-dried on plastic grids. This shows us how the paper behaves in the process -how it shrinks and cockles.

We beat abaca and bamboo separately, making a set of tests for each fiber. The amount of pulp created a thick paper, and I noticed that abaca shrank quite a lot- where the bamboo remained nearly the same in size. Bamboo, which I had not experimented with before, kept an oatmeal texture even after 100 min.