paper thoughts

field retted milkweed

making paper is elemental for me. i love exploring new fibers, and using new moulds. in my mill i often learn a new pulp, trying to figure out the characteristics and peculiarities of each. one thing that has always happened, at the end of several days or weeks i have lots of bits of different pulps which i then combine and make my version of badger paper. this paper is always wonderful.

 a stack of my papers

when i visited the japanese paper place last week i was struck by several things, the commitment to a culture's product that was large enough to develop a business, and an exquisite collection of art made from japanese paper. i looked and touched items of great beauty, and exquisite aesthetic. 

these are skeins of hiroko karuna's spun kozo, naturally dyed by her. the japanese paper place has a collection of her skeins cut as thin as 1 millimeter before spinning.

each one of these skeins, if i remember correctly, is one sheet of kozo. you will notice that she has refined her spinning and now excludes the characteristic slubs found in most handspun paper. once woven, these fine yarns make exquisite cloths, art works on their own. 

these are two 4 selvedge squares that i have ecodyed, borrowing india flint's process. you can see the slubs in them, and the paper was cut into about 3/16" strips before spinning, huge in comparison. 

spun lokta

different aesthetics. related thinking. love of fiber, evident, i hope, in both.