jewelia (jewelia@erols.com)
Mon, 08 Mar 1999 00:46:25 -0800
to get back on track i'm at least going to start off the thread i meant to restart earlier today-following up on some promises i made a few weeks ago to say more about papermaking--particularly the washi--thank you friends in japan for the paper balloon--it is beautiful--and i am overwhelmed with new friends--so here we go:::
starting with western paper: in summary (for my style and what i could do):::
you can buy machine-made, mould-made, and hand-made western papers. of these hand-made makes the strongest, most integral paper--the fibers are more random--sort of locking them together better. machine-made tend to have a pronounced grain as the speed of the web sort of aligns them in one direction--so it is the weakest and you will notice the grain if you try to tear the paper--newsheet tears easy in one direction and is much harder to tear a straight line by hand when you are too lazy to find the scissors and just try to tear out those coupons for the walmart sale of alt-photo chemistry kits (okay its late at night and i can't sleep) mould-made paper is made by a machine that dips something similar to a mold in a fashion as similar to hand-made as possible and the result is inbetween--generally this would be the method of most of our cotton rag papers we use. you get what you pay for.
some of our processes-- more than others are --at least from one perspective-- seem trapped on a white cotton surface these days--mostly for somewhat assumed archival purposes--just want to point out that because a paper is rag or cotton does not necessarily mean it will last a long time or more than a couple years -- cotton papers are particularly susceptible to certain microbes and insects that like the fibers besides attack form chemical contaminants-- and in particular molds and vermin like the starches and gelatins that are often added into them--foxing and all sorts of bugs and critters-- so just remember archival depends a lot on treatment in process and after i would say--and in the end is far more important i would guess
furthermore--archival is relative--western art assumes cotton rag is the superior one but this may be only in comparison to the materials traditionally used for western prints on paper -- note furthermore that cotton rag is not cotton linters and cotton linters are the material used to make most of what is "commonly called rag paper" today. furthermore cotton rag paper is not likely to be anywhere near as archival as washi--i'm not suggesting that cotton rag is no good--just that there is more to it than that--again whether both/either "lasts" depends on how its stored---most prints on anything decent would last a lon