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This information is reprinted from the For Beginners
column of Hand Papermaking Newsletter #83 (July, 2008).
To learn how to order Hand Papermaking bi-annual magazine
and quarterly newsletter, click
here.
Adapting to Unfamiliar Studios
As a new papermaker who is unlikely to have a fancy
studio set up, you may find yourself an itinerant
papermaker, making paper wherever you can finagle access. If
you’ve had the benefit of a couple of different papermaking
teachers, you have discovered that there is no one right way
to do things. Teacher A instructs you to do just what
Teacher B announces is a bad habit. Likewise, each studio is
different. What happens when you find yourself in unfamiliar
territory, with a different beating system, or couching
directly to felts instead of pellon, or with a loft rather
than a restraint drying system?
A former professor (who, it must be said, was a great
advocate of my work) drove me crazy when introducing the
printmaking shop. This individual’s instructions were: “it’s
just like cooking in a different kitchen.” The thing is, not
all kitchens are created equal. If I am used to cooking in a
tiny apartment kitchen, I might not know how to use an
industrial-sized stand mixer. If I don’t have non-stick pans
in my kitchen, I might not know that by using a metal spoon
in your pan, I am ruining it.
By way of confession, I recently put some wear and tear
on a stack drying system. Not all stack dryers are created
alike, and the stack dryer to which I was accustomed would
have my production run dry in absolutely no longer than two
days. Well, here I was with a perpetually damp stack dryer
as I exchanged the still damp paper for fresh wet sheets.
Second confession: my first impulse was a wish for my own
studio, built the way I like it with vat tables that are low
enough for my own meager height and stack dryers up to some
serious production.
But as I rotated my way through my 300 sheets, stacked in
posts of ten between felts, because there are only so many
large wet felts I can heft around, I realized that I would
not be learning much of anything pulling this run in the
familiar studio I used in grad school. I would never see
what it does to couch my sheets onto felts instead of pellon,
nor would I learn anything about how to manage the wetness
and surface texture of the felt-couched sheets. I wouldn’t
have become good friends with the Valley beater through
which I ran a good seventeen loads or so of pulp.
So don’t be afraid of cooking in different kitchens. A
papermaker’s greatest strength is not a stellar shake at the
vat, but rather superhuman problem-solving skills. The
corollary is: don’t be afraid to ask questions. A person can
get so accustomed to a familiar studio that one forgets that
things can be done any other way. So: how do you clean your
felts? How do you load your stack dryer? How long does it
take for your paper to dry? How do you press your paper? A
papermaker can answer these questions for a familiar studio.
But different pressing procedures might work better for
paper couched on felts, for example. You’ll never know until
you try...or ask. Instead of bemoaning your lack of personal
papermaking studio in your possibly non-existent garage, get
out there and make paper promiscuously. Your studio
knowledge will grow to comprehensive proportions and when
you do get around to putting together that ideal studio,
you’ll know exactly what works for you.
Copyright 2008 Hand Papermaking, Inc.
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