What Do We Really Know About the Paper We Print On?
The British Association of Paper Historians 2023 Spring Meeting
St Bride Foundation Commemorative Stone
Well the answer was actually quite little so here we found ourselves on the early train to London for an enlightening day of discovery. Invited along to the British Association of Paper Historians Spring Meeting as part of the Wallpaper History Society we had no idea what to expect.
Turning off the busy hustle and bustle of Fleet Street and down a rather small alleyway puts you right in front of an impressive Grade II Listed Victorian Building, this is the home of the St Bride Foundation and a hidden gem of printmaking history right in the heart of London.
The St Bride Foundation was established in 1891 in an area that from the 1700’s right up until the 1980’s was the centre of London’s newspaper and printmaking businesses. This institution was set up amongst the clattering and clunking of the printing houses to support the network of people and printmakers living and working here. It provided a printing school and library as well as recreational facilities such as a gymnasium and swimming pool, a community centre centred around the heart of the printmaking industry.
Right up to modern day the community and the education of print is still at the core ethos of the St Bride Foundation as it hosts various design events and workshops, spreading the information collected deep from its own impressive archive of printmaking history here in London. It has many of its spaces available for hire and it is inside one of these large and historic spaces that we find ourselves, The Farringdon Room.
“This institution was set up amongst the clattering and clunking of the printing houses to support the network of people and printmakers living and working here.”
It was here that a rather fascinating collection of people started to gather, The British Association of Paper Historians.
The BAPH are a national association that is dedicated to the history and information surrounding papermaking, a craft which is incredibly important to the UK’s history in particular. They are constantly compiling and publishing an archive of papermaking resources and history and have a great emphasis on the sharing of material, which was much the purpose of this spring meeting. All information that without these dedicated individuals would be lost to the depths of time. They work with modern day mills and historians alike to preserve this important social history of papermaking.
Artists, representatives from current mills, historians and us wallpaper printers all collected together with one core interest … paper, an incredibly important resource that is often overlooked. If you are in the art and design industry then you may understand the importance of paper, a product is only as good as the paper that it is printed or designed upon and the art of making paper itself was an industrial revolution that we, right here in the UK, were at the forefront of.
Out of the myriad of informative and inspiring talks that were given by the historians and artists alike of the BAPH there were three particular talks that have really remained stuck in our minds from the day …
British Association of Paper Historians Watermarked Paper
“Capturing the Earth’s Resources”
Peter Bower
During the very first talk “Capturing the Earth’s Resources” by Peter Bower we were introduced to several incredible early botanical artists but it was Mary Delany who made an impression on us.
Mary (1700 - 1788) was a rather revolutionary Georgian Artist who created a new technique in her 70s which she called ‘paper mosaics’, this was in fact an incredibly intricate and complex form of collage through which she created her Botanical Drawings. She would source paper of all hues, shades and varieties to create her pieces and her drawings which probably represent the vast majority of paper available at the time. Especially as she was often given paper through her extensive contacts.
She produced nearly 1000 examples of work that were highly valued for both their delicate beauty as well as great scientific detail. The vast majority of her surviving work is contained within the British Museum’s collection with the exception of three examples which were owned by our late queen.
A fascinating artist that we were entirely unaware of but there was one particular part of her story that we really connected with, the fact that every black sheet of paper that she used as the mounting board for her complex paper mosaics were actually end papers from wallpaper and they often still bore their wallpaper tax stamps.
This was a rather fascinating correlation between wallpaper history. The wallpaper tax was introduced in 1712 as wallpaper became increasingly popular as a furnishing and the government saw this as an opportunity to generate some much needed income. If you were buying patterned, painted or printed wallpaper then a tax of 1 pence per square yard was imposed and to ensure that these were being paid the wallpaper would be stamped with a wallpaper tax stamp for that year. By 1806 there was even a death penalty in place for the forgery of these wallpaper tax stamps and by 1809 you had to pay a whole shilling per square yard. However all in all the tax did turn out to be a complete failure and it was abolished in 1836.
This rather obscure section of wallpaper history to crop up in the work of Mary Delaney was only the beginning of the entangling threads connecting our craft of Hand Block Printed Wallpaper right to Paper History itself.
Mary Delany Botanical Study Detail
“Washi Memories”
Ellie Burkett
The second thing that we were introduced to were the Kamikawasaki Papermakers based in the Fukushima province of Japan. These were entire families and generations that would all work together to produce one thing, paper. A family business centred around craft, a link that speaks directly to us here at Bruce Fine Papers.
Artist Ellie Burkett gave this fascinating talk on the Kamikawasaki Papermakers as part of her current collaboration that she has been crafting and collating for several years now between herself, retired Kamikawasaki Papermakers Koichi Anzai and Noriko Anzai, and letterpress book printers the Old School Press.
Ellie has been working closely with the idea of archive and family history drawing upon black and white photographs provided by Koichi Anzai as well as Koichi and Noriko’s collective memories to record this 1000 year old era of Japanese Papermaking that is currently dying out. It can only be described as a passion project to preserve this particular province's craft history from the sources of the final craftspeople involved in the papermaking of Kamikawasaki.
Facing language struggles as well as a declining industry Ellie is working against the clock to document this ancient handmade craft and the important social history of a forgotten hillside village with a long history of fine handmade paper hidden inside a province in Japan that is largely remembered for the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster of 2011 and not this rich craft history.
All her research and the memories of these ailing papermakers will be bound into a beautiful artists volume entitled ‘Washi Memories’ created in collaboration with the Old School Press. An artefact in its own right it will contain original paper samples from two papermaking households as well as an archive of black and white photographs from the late 1950’s.
A large part of the papermaking economy in Kamikawasaki, often the winter occupation of farmers, came from making Shoji Paper. These are delicate but very strong papers that were made from the Kozo fibres that grew in this region. These papers were used for the sliding paper doors and room dividers that were popular in traditional Japan. Sadly, as Western Culture and building techniques started to creep in, the demand for this paper declined, as did the industry in Kamikawasaki.
This industry declining due to technological advancements and culture shifts is a poignant point which connects deep with the history of block printed wallpaper itself, as it too suffered a decline as a result of the introduction of more economical and faster machine printed papers. Two industries, countries apart entwined through the declining art of a lengthy and handmade process.
Ellie Burkett and Kamikawasaki Paper Examples
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“Broke and What to do About It”
Neil Robertson
This brings us onto the final section that really opened our eyes at the conference … broke. “Broke and What to do About It” was the name of the talk given by Neil Robertson and it proved to be an entertaining discussion all about the waste from the paper making process, a bi product known in the industry as broke. We assume this was simply because if you make enough broke then you will be well on the way to being broke.
We were taken on a journey through the ages of the paper making machine and the various enhancements and improvements that were introduced to help make the broke more manageable and to recycle it more efficiently back into the process.
Now we have our own broke here at Bruce Fine Papers which we also recycle back into our process such as using the trim from our papers as an eco friendly packaging material, but this was nothing compared to the scale of the broke being made in the large scale paper making industry.
It really does make you wonder just how in all of humanity they ever managed to effectively machine make paper in the first place with pulp and waste paper erupting from almost all sections of the process. An eye opener and one that has helped us to appreciate pieces of wallpaper history that we often don't think about, like the conversion from single sheets to continuous roll printing and all the processes and invention that it took to get us to where we are today.
Bruce Fine Papers Trim ‘Broke’
We will certainly be taking up the offer to go along to another British Association of Paper Historians event and get even deeper into this fascinating history and processes surrounding paper. We only print on the stuff but it couldn’t be more important or prevalent.
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