A97. Paper From Plants
Title
A97. Paper From Plants
Creator
Thomas, Peter and Donna
Description
29.5 x 22 cm (11 5/8” x 8 ¾”), 100 pages, 150 copies.
Binding: Some copies full-bound in green Morocco leather over boards. Raised geometric design on cover. Title on pampas grass paper label on cover. Title stamped in black on spine. Housed in a green paper wrapper tied with a bronze ribbon. Some copies quarter-bound in green Morocco leather and green painted paper. Raised geometric design on cover. Title on pampas grass paper label on cover. Title stamped in black on spine. Housed in a green paper wrapper tied with a bronze ribbon. Paper: Text printed on white cotton paper handmade by Peter Thomas. Printing: Letterpress. Illustrations printed from photoengravings. Typography: Handset Centaur and Neuland; titles in light green. Illustration: 30 paper samples bound in. Reproductions of thirty-one drawings by Donna Thomas; printed in light green. Illustrations hand-colored in copies 1-15. Notes: Paper made using an English double mould.
“This book is a companion volume to our earlier work, A Collection of Paper Samples from Hand Paper Mills in the United States of America [A75]. It presents a cross-section of papers made from local plants by America’s hand papermakers. In contrast to our earlier volume, the papermakers who contributed to this book represent all levels of expertise and act as proof that beautiful paper can be made from plants with a bare minimum of equipment or experience. Some of the papermakers worked with plants they loved, like iris and sweet pea from the garden. Others made their paper as a statement: to legalize the use of certain plants; to spur the eradication of invasive non-native plant species. Still others used industrial by-products to create commercial handmade papers. It has not been easy to complete this book. It took thousands of hours to process the plants and to make the 4,350 sheets of paper necessary for the edition. Unexpected problems came up: Marilyn Sward’s Spanish moss was confiscated by the DEA when she shipped it from Florida to her home in Chicago. Neil Bonham had a terrible allergic reaction to the Daphne he used, and David Kimball could not even make his paper because of an adverse reaction to the poison oak he had harvested for the project.
Again, considering this a companion volume to our A Collection of Paper Samples, we wanted to make it the same size and used the same general design for the binding. But if the samples were folded in half, the book would become half the size. We had been teaching non-adhesive binding classes, and experimenting with ways to bind single sheets of paper, and used concepts we had worked out for those classes create the binding structure for this book. We often had our students decorate the binding paper with acrylic paint, and used that same process to decorate the covers of this book.”
Binding: Some copies full-bound in green Morocco leather over boards. Raised geometric design on cover. Title on pampas grass paper label on cover. Title stamped in black on spine. Housed in a green paper wrapper tied with a bronze ribbon. Some copies quarter-bound in green Morocco leather and green painted paper. Raised geometric design on cover. Title on pampas grass paper label on cover. Title stamped in black on spine. Housed in a green paper wrapper tied with a bronze ribbon. Paper: Text printed on white cotton paper handmade by Peter Thomas. Printing: Letterpress. Illustrations printed from photoengravings. Typography: Handset Centaur and Neuland; titles in light green. Illustration: 30 paper samples bound in. Reproductions of thirty-one drawings by Donna Thomas; printed in light green. Illustrations hand-colored in copies 1-15. Notes: Paper made using an English double mould.
“This book is a companion volume to our earlier work, A Collection of Paper Samples from Hand Paper Mills in the United States of America [A75]. It presents a cross-section of papers made from local plants by America’s hand papermakers. In contrast to our earlier volume, the papermakers who contributed to this book represent all levels of expertise and act as proof that beautiful paper can be made from plants with a bare minimum of equipment or experience. Some of the papermakers worked with plants they loved, like iris and sweet pea from the garden. Others made their paper as a statement: to legalize the use of certain plants; to spur the eradication of invasive non-native plant species. Still others used industrial by-products to create commercial handmade papers. It has not been easy to complete this book. It took thousands of hours to process the plants and to make the 4,350 sheets of paper necessary for the edition. Unexpected problems came up: Marilyn Sward’s Spanish moss was confiscated by the DEA when she shipped it from Florida to her home in Chicago. Neil Bonham had a terrible allergic reaction to the Daphne he used, and David Kimball could not even make his paper because of an adverse reaction to the poison oak he had harvested for the project.
Again, considering this a companion volume to our A Collection of Paper Samples, we wanted to make it the same size and used the same general design for the binding. But if the samples were folded in half, the book would become half the size. We had been teaching non-adhesive binding classes, and experimenting with ways to bind single sheets of paper, and used concepts we had worked out for those classes create the binding structure for this book. We often had our students decorate the binding paper with acrylic paint, and used that same process to decorate the covers of this book.”
Publisher
Santa Cruz, California: Peter & Donna Thomas
Date
1999
Language
English
Files
Collection
Appears in Exhibits
Citation
Thomas, Peter and Donna, “A97. Paper From Plants,” Digital Exhibits - UWM Libraries Special Collections, accessed November 18, 2024, https://web.uwm.edu/lib-omeka-spc2/items/show/556.