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Down an alley thick with nodding hydrangeas and vigorous mulberries, John Stimson rolls up his sleeves. Next to him, a friend drops fingerfuls of damp paper pieces into a whirring food processor. They are making paper. It looks like wizardry. Their white shirts gleam in the dusk. John's arms are strewn with pale lint from stirring his brew with his hands. A steel washtub serves as the vat where creamy blossoms float in a grey-blue soup. A bowl of catalpa flowers sits next to an enameled pot half-full of fermented cooked okra. John explains the okra is necessary as a binder for the paper, otherwise it would crumble and shred. The fermenting was not intentional, but is forgiven. The paper pieces, when properly blended, are stirred into the vat.
John hands me finished pieces of paper. He made the oat-colored piece from linen fibers. The swirls of white against cream look like frost patterns or smoke. Other pieces are coarser, with visible flower petals or snippets of letters. Marvelously textured, fragile as butterflies, these single pieces of handmade paper are piercingly beautiful.
Paper is the medium that formed the basis for mankind's finest art. Poetry, drawing, calligraphy, literature--all flourished because of this humble material. Ancient paper fragments found in Chinese tombs establish the birth of paper production as preceding our human reckoning of time. Its name derives from the material used by ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans: papyrus. Papyrus is one of those predecessors of paper that were produced by beating or pressing. They are known by the generic term "tapa" and are mostly made from the inner bark of paper mulberry, fig, and daphne. This oldest papermaking technique is still practiced through the Equatorial belt and at a few locations in the Himalayas and in Southeast Asia.
John shows me the deckle, a fiberglass screen stretched over a wooden frame with a removable top frame which pegs neatly into the lower screened piece. He made the deckle out of cheap pine which he boiled in beeswax. Holding the deckle vertically, he plunges it quickly almost to the bottom of the vat. He then levels it and pulls it up horizontally. As soon as the rim of the deckle is visible through the brew, he delicately and slowly raises it until he can see the thickness of the pulp on the screen. Just before he pulls the deckle free of the vat, there is a slightly stronger tug as the surface tension clings to the soggy pulp. During this process, John guides the deckle like a dancer.
John holds the dripping deckle over the vat, then tilts it slightly to drain off the remainder. As he lifts the upper frame of the deckle away from the pulp, he explains that care is needed not to drip on the fresh pulp. Drips cause thin spots in the paper, called "vatsman's tears." Next, he places one edge of the deckle on the side of a dampened fabric square, called a felt. He gently eases the deckle down, with the pulp directly on the fabric. Pulling the deckle from the pulp is done with a series of quick jerky movements that prevent the pulp from clinging to the screen.
At this point, John taps at a few bubbles and smoothes away excess pulp around the edges of the sheet. This whole process is called "couching" (pronounced kooshing) and is what freed the papermaker from the necessity of drying single sheets on the frame. John spreads catalpa flowers on the pulp and then repeats the process with a much thinner layer of pulp to create a flower-paper sandwich, which he then covers with another sheet of felt and prepares to make another sheet.
The Chinese not only invented paper, but Chinese papermakers developed a number of paper specialties: sized, coated, and dyed paper; and paper protected against ravages by insects. Chinese papermaking techniques reached Korea at an early date and were introduced to Japan in the year 610. Paper is still made by hand in these two countries in the old tradition, often using fibers of the mulberry tree (Jap. kozo). Knowledge of papermaking spread to Central Asia and Tibet and then on to India. The Arabs, in the course of their eastern expansion, became acquainted with the production of the new writing material near Samarkand. Lacking fresh plant fibers, the Arabs used rags almost exclusively. The defective processing equipment produced rather a poorly ground pulp. The Arabs made thin sheets on screens made of reeds and "coated" them on both sides with starch paste. This gave Arab paper its good writing properties and fine appearance.
The export of Arab-made paper to Europe, especially to Italy, is well documented. Transmitted along with the paper were the secrets of its production. In Italy, papermakers at two 13th-century centers, Fabriano and Amalfi, began to improve the Arab technique. Italian handmade paper is still world renowned for its exceptional quality.
Handmade paper, as well as the papermaking process, has an ethereal quality. With a graceful, arcing movement, John Stimson pulls the dripping pulp to the surface of the vat and presses it gently and quickly in layers. John will flatten and dry this stack in a book-binding press for a few days. Before the sheets are crisp-dry, he will remove them to dry individually, which will give them a smooth finish. The finished product is both gossamer and wholesome. It is easy to imagine how the development of paper gave birth to art in many forms. Embedded with fragments of lichen, flowers, and phrases, these sheets look like a platform for dreams.
