U of S | Mailing List Archive | alt-photo-process-l | Re: flax paper and palladium

Re: flax paper and palladium

Chris, (and Camden)

I am a papermaker so I'm happy to be able to contribute something to the list. I will be teaching some of these combined processes probably next year at the Brimingham Bloomfield Art Center just outside Detroit. I was just hired to be on their faculty.

I'll mention sources for paper and info at the end of this email.

Paper made from flax and abaca (a wonderful fiber from the banana family) are much, much stronger than any cotton, whether it's rag or cotton linters. In the sheet formation process they (flax and abaca) have higher shrinkage so must be restrain dryed otherwise they shrivel up. (That is great for some purposes, such as paper sculpture.)

I've been using combinations of flax, cotton and abaca for some time with my alternative processes and am very happy with these fibers. The weight varies depending on the papermakers desires. But both flax and abaca have wonderful wet strength for very thin sheets. The paper will withstand repeated rinsing, I've never had any of my own paper fall apart on me. (Until recently when I tried thinner sheets of !00% Rag, I didn't like it and won't do that again).

An occasional project I'll do is make larger sheets (22X30 or larger) of flax paper, walnut dyed (soaked walnut hulls, you get a great dye). Using cyanotype I get a navy blue that is attractive on the walnut colored paper. Frequently I'll get oversized negatives made from Kinkos or a blueprint company and make images. On the walnut dyed paper, the navy blue color and with the "unsharp" oversized negative I get interesting textural pieces.

Also, I have toned cyanotype paper with the tannic acid rinse, then washing soda. Depending on the length of time I can get an almost black color to the cyanotype portion. The paper itself can be a bit stained but what I have done is to draw with watercolor pencils or watercolors on the images (usually floral photograms) and get a very unique image.

I have a type of Hollander beater so can make the pulp myself. It is expensive otherwise. Making the paper cuts the expense way down but it is work and time consuming.

Camden mentioned U of Iowa as a good source for the paper. They are, in fact they restored the US Bill of Rights (I believe). Great facilities.

Also here are two other sources for those interested:

Twinrocker
www.twinrocker.com (excellent source for information about paper and a place to purchase paper)

And here is a book written in about 1984 called:

THE NEW PHOTOGRAPHY
by Catharine Reeve & Marilyn Sward

Excellent papermakers who experimented quite a bit with alt processes.

Chris, fun to hear of your experiments.

Anne



On Dec 14, 2006, at 10:21 AM, Christina Z. Anderson wrote:

Good morning,
Yesterday I had the fun experience of collaborating with an art grad student who makes her own flax paper. She wanted to put photographs on her flax sculptures, so I told her to come over to my house and we'd see if it worked. I thought those on the list who are paper makers might like to know this.

I guess she buys the flax pulp from a paper supply house, which is somewhat expensive--she said $100 a bucket (it comes liquid). I know NOTHING about paper making, but the flax paper is dark parchment tannish, and quite textural, and very long fibered, but the paper is flat and very thin. It irons well (flax being same as linen, of course) and lays flat, in other words, after wet baths it doesn't shrink and pucker.

I thought it would disintegrate immediately in the development bath, or whatnot. It didn't . We were doing small prints for testing and not large though, but they held together perfectly, even when I held them up by one edge. Very strong.

I tested one with just regular pt/pd, one on top of gelatin size, and one with the pt/pd cut in half with water. The paper is very absorbent so that 26 drops were sucked up into an area of, let's say, 4x6. On the gelatin size it did not soak up right away so that was a good thing, so sizing could be the way to go, but the print we agreed looked best was the one with pt/pd cut in half with water. It was warmer in tone (redder) than the others.

Then after we completed this test it occurred to me that cyanotype toned with tannic acid would be the cheapest and easiest way to go (no development or clear baths) but what amazed me is the beautiful tonal range of pt/pd on this paper.

I also felt it would be great paper to give a final soak in wax to transparentize.

I think Camden is going to test VDB and liquid emulsion for her, right Camden? For archival purposes, I wonder if the toned cyano would be best, so you don't have to mess with silver left in the paper? Nevertheless, this paper has great possibilities. I told her she should sell it, but each sheet just to make (small sheets) is about $10 so selling them, she'd have to probably charge $25 for say, a foot and a half square sheet?

I wish I was a paper maker...I wonder if there is a commercial source for homemade flax paper? Someone google it for me, I have to go gum print :)

This is definitely the benefit of teaching in an art environment-- collaboration. The other grad student who came over to watch does large charcoal drawings, erases and redraws and erases and redraws while she films the drawings over an 8 hour day, and then ends up with a movie, dark and charcoaly--really beautiful.
Chris
CZAphotography.com