i happened upon this wonderful 360º tour of aquari paper - a paper mill in banyoles, spain. they have been making handmade paper since 1983, and to say the least, i'm drooling.
if you want to see some of their paper in artistic action, check out their facebook page for photos of artists using their product!
this brings me back to the many semesters spent in our fibers room, where i had the great fortune of having access to a hollander beater. if you're unfamilliar with what this is, it is like a giant grinding machine that turns raw product into paper pulp. think water park lazy river and instead of going under a bridge, the pulp material goes through spinning blades to shred the material into a fine pulp. oh to have access to one of these machines again...
in these photos i am working on making a few giant sheets of paper in the fibers studio! in the second photo, you can see a photo of the hollander beater i used. it took several rounds and many hours of beating, but the process was so fun! since there were no moulds and deckles large enough, i ended up constructing my own out of 2x4s and door screen. i placed a thick plastic sheet under the frame and stapled the edges to the top of the frame to allow the pulp to settle evenly in a bath of water. once spread out, i cut holes in the plastic to allow the water to drain out. in order to couch the paper, i placed sheets of strong fabric interfacing on the pulp, and tediously soaked up as much of the excess water from the pulp with towels.
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