This video shows students at University of Iowa’s Center for the Book learning how to make paper by hand.
The next video, showing Hayle Mill’s process is fascinating, giving a good approximation one assumes, of the industrial process of paper making as it was for hundreds of years before mechanization. But you’ll have to go to YouTube to see it though. Just click on the YouTube logo at the bottom right hand corner. Unfortunately Hayle Mill closed in 1987, though Simon Greene does have a website on which he offers some papers, moulds etc. for sale.
(This thorough and useful reference site from University of Iowa’s Timothy Barrett, is recommended to those who want to know more.)
[…] He would dip the mould plus deckle into the vat of pulp and water, allowing water to drain out leaving a consistent layer of fiber on the wire mesh. “The vatman spreads the stuff on the mould by gently shaking from right to left and from left to right, as if he wished to riddle it, until it is spread equally over the whole surface of the mould; this is known as “promener”: or to “shake”. In the same way, by another movement which is made by pushing the mould forward and pulling it back in a to and fro motion, as if riddling, the stuff binds and knits together and becomes perfect; this is known as “serrer” or to “shut” the sheet. These two movements are accompanied by a slight shake which serves to “put together” the sheet, that is to say to fix and bind it; but they are carried out very quickly with seven or eight movements of the hands and in the space of four or five seconds. Immediately this stuff, so fluid, which seems no more than slightly cloudy water, knits together. . . . In this way the sheet precipitates onto the brass screen while the water drains away through the interstices and a real sheet of paper remains on the mould.” (Joseph-Jérome Lefrançois de Lalande, “Art de faire le papier,” in Description des arts et métiers, vol. 4, Paris: Académie royale des sciences, 1761. Translated by Richard MacIntyre Atkinson as The Art of Papermaking, Kilmurry, Ireland: Ashling Press, 1976.) This action is one of those “flow” activities which it took years to learn: the vatman was responsible for the consistency of thickness and weight of each sheet, for its formation — ideally consistently even across the entire mould, and for the speed at which the whole operation could run. The vatman would work with two moulds and one deckle, handing off the first mould after dipping one sheet, and then putting the deckle onto the other mould to form a second sheet while the coucher was unmoulding that first one. (This all becomes much clearer in the two videos attached to the post Paper making by hand 4.) […]
[…] Book All sorts of stuff about books and book manufacturing « Paper making by hand 2 Paper making by hand 4 […]
[…] This post amplifies my four earlier paper making by hand posts: One, Two, Three, Four. […]
[…] paper used came from The Barham Greene Paper Co. My post of 17 June 2014 shows their mill, Hayle Mill, in operation. Also relevant is my post of 13 September 2013 which has […]
[…] it has to be a wide target; total consistent is obviously unattainable. (The fascinating video at Paper making by hand 4 is well worth looking at to see the craft involved.) In the 1960s and 70s we lived somewhere […]