Posted on by mmitra

“… LABOUR INTENSIVE BUT… SATISFYING.“

When reflecting on all my earlier actions, I realize I use paper as a medium most of the times. A4 white printer paper. They come in bulk stacks of a few hundred pages. My use of these papers are mostly single use. I might look back on it for reference but otherwise they sit there on my desk, piling up. The pulp and paper industry contributes to a fairly major part of global warming pollution, water pollution and deforestation. One of my investigations in my actions is how can ecology inform my practice to create design that sustains. How could I explore sustainability if the medium I use to explore it is in itself unsustainable by design? How could I change this? I decided that I was going to make my own paper.

I took a walk through my neighbourhood, trying to decide what resource I could use to make my paper. I happend upon these palm trees pictured above. They are fairly common in Saudi Arabia but I don’t believe they are of a local variety. If my research is correct, this is either sabal palmetto (Southern U.S.A, Cuba) or windmill palm tree (China, Japan, Myanmar, India) or I could be completely wrong. This is just speculation. But these trees grow well despite the harsh climate. There were some dead palm leaves the gardener hacked off and were left on the ground so I picked it up and took it home. The stem is prickly and leaves are hard and extremely fibrous.

For my first paper making method, I decided to weave the leaves. I didn’t have the materials to make a mold and deckle yet and I had a lot of leaves so I did what I could with what I had. Leaves weaved together isn’t the best of paper admittedly. The leaves I used were waxy so the color would run off the surface (ink would work better probably). I like how the weave has a grid pattern so it’s probably good to record information in a table format. Maybe. Since pigments don’t hold very well on the weave, I decided to make another weave but this time soak it in bleach solution so it would turn white and make it easier for pigments to hold. That’s not the most sustainable solution but it works. It takes quite a while for the bleach to turn the weave white. It might take a few days after this action. We’ll see how that goes later.

I got my mold (no deckle). Time to prep the leaves. I cut the leaves into small pieces, placed in large pot of water with baking soda and set it to simmer. This process is used to soften the leaves. The palm leaves I used were extremely hard and fibrous. I left it to soak and simmer for about 2 days before I turned it into pulp. Paper making is messy. I scooped the pulp into the mold and flattened and evened it out using a spatula. It’s a different method from all the YouTube tutorials I watched but I didn’t have a bucket/ tub big enough to fit my mold so I improvised. Once I had the pulp evened out in the mold, I transferred the molded pulp onto cloth and let it dry with some weight pressed on to it to keep the paper from curling.

All in all, this worked out pretty well. The paper is thick, pliable and I could write on it. The back turned out a lighter brown from the front. I trimmed the edges since they were quite sharp after drying. Later I will trim it to an A4 size and see if the printer would except this paper. I want to know if printing is even feasible with handmade paper so I could make prints more sustainably. I hope the printer doesn’t get jammed. Fingers crossed.

I enjoyed the papermaking process immensely. It was pretty labour intensive but overall satisfying. If the printer experiment works, I am excited to create more custom paper for myself.

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