Artful papermaking

Amanda Degener makes paper from old jeans.

As the resident papermaker and outreach coordinator at Pyramid Atlantic, a center for print, paper and book arts in Silver Spring, she specializes in hand papermaking.

“It’s alchemy,” Ms. Degener says. “You’re changing one material into another material.”

The science of papermaking has been around since at least the first century A.D., and the same basic techniques are still used.

The first step is feeding plant fibers in the form of cloth, such as cotton, flax, hemp or ramie, into a Hollander beater, Ms. Degener says. Small pieces of wastepaper also can be pulped in a blender. The result will be an oatmeal-like pulp.

The pulp is then placed in a vat of water, where a mold and deckle, a screened frame, is dipped, she says. As the water drains away from the screen, the basis for the paper is left.

If artists are feeling creative, they can “paint” on the paper with pulp paint, which is fiber with dye, Ms. Degener says.

The paper is usually “couched,” or placed, on a wool blanket to dry. Then it is pressed in a machine at least twice to squeeze the water out of it. When a sheet is still slightly damp, an iron can create a smooth finish.

“Scientists don’t like to hear about magic, but to take an old pair of bluejeans and make bluejean paper, that’s magic,” Ms. Degener says.

In the mill, paper is made in mass quantities through similar procedures involving large machines, she says. Generally, she says, pulp is made in a hydrapulper and then transferred to a moving mesh belt. The water drains from the pulp, and rollers press the paper.

Papermaking is based on hydrogen bonding, says Howard Clark, co-owner of Twinrocker Handmade Paper in Brookston, Ind.

Because there are just two ingredients in papermaking, plant fiber and water, as the paper dries and the water leaves the pulp, the fibers form new bonds, called “hydrogen bonds,” he says.

Water, an unsymmetrical molecule with two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, easily attaches to other substances, Mr. Clark says.

“You actually make a chemical change,” Mr. Clark says. “It’s a reversible bond, if you work water into it. That’s recycling.”

Although almost any plant can be used to make paper, some plants have more fiber than others, he says.

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