Papermaking

2021.05.19 - A History of Early Papermaking in Asia and the Middle East

News/ Papermaking

A History of Early Papermaking in Asia and the Middle East: Online Event

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The London Metropolitan Archives are hosting an online event on June 17th, 2021 centering on the history of paper. They invite you to learn how paper was made in Asia and the Middle East before its arrival in Europe. Hosted by paper conservator Tom Bower, the event will look at early papermaking in Asia and the Middle East, from its roots in ancient China to its arrival in Europe in the Middle Ages.

This online event is free but registration is required: register here.

Source: A History of early papermaking in Asia and the Middle East

2020.06.10 - iBB Podcast #9.2 - Stepan Chizhov

3d-Printed Tools/ Digitization/ iBB Podcast/ Papermaking

iBB Podcast #9.2 – Stepan Chizhov – 3d-Printing, How iBookBinding Works, and Workshop Tour

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The second part of the episode with Stepan Chizhov acting as a guest is dedicated to more technical aspects of how iBookBinding works. We talk some nerdy stuff about 3d-printing in general and about making money with 3d-printing. You will also find a workshop tour here!

Audio

Video

Listen to this episode on:

Become a patron (and get more content): https://www.patreon.com/ibookbinding

Join us on:

00:00 – Beginning
00:19 – Making money with 3d-printing. Routine and time consumed on production
02:25 – Time spent packing the orders
03:57 – Increasing production efficiency with better/more expensive equipment. “Cheap” 3d-printers
05:47 – I want to try 3d-printing; where to begin?
08:08 – The models of 3d-printers I like the most (to date)
09:50 – Difference between the cheaper and more expensive printers
11:43 – Printing large objects
14:50 – Competition on the market of 3d-printed bookbinding tools / 3d-printed papermaking molds
17:33 – Improving the designs and following the requests of customers
19:47 – Examples of incremental improvements
24:32 – Book scanning frame for smartphones – show & tell
29:31 – 3d-printing workshop tour
30:59 – Some of the 3d-printers
32:45 – My first 3d-printer
33:24 – The largest printer I have – Creality CR-10 S4
34:19 – 37×37 cm papermaking mold / Printing large items in parts
35:17 – Calculations and 3d-designs that need relly powerful processors
39:51 – Workbench with woodworking and bookbinding tools
43:54 – My way of storing clamps
44:53 – Some of the weights I use for my projects
46:11 – I love buying things for storage and tools in thrift stores and on flea markets
46:48 – Book presses and sewing frames / Woodworking projects
48:10 – Cutting time-consuming processes / Troubles with stock and delivery because of the lockdowns
49:30 – Keeping work/life balance as a freelancer

iBB YouTube Stub v.2.1

3d-Printed Tools/ Papermaking

3D-Printed Mold – Making Paper with the Japanese Wave Pattern

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Last Friday, I had to make some paper to test recently designed and printed papermaking molds with the Japanese wave pattern. One of the molds was a novelty for our shop — it’s designed to make A6-sized sheets of paper.

And while many of us are self-isolating these days, I decided to make this papermaking session public, talk about our 3d-printed molds, the differences in the designs of simplified molds and their counterparts with more classic designs, shaped paper, and other things. And answer some questions from our Instagram followers.

Check all the sorts of molds available in our shop!

So, here is the video. Below the video, you’ll find the table of contents with the timestamps. The next live stream on Instagram will probably happen this Tuesday in the late evening, Amsterdam time. I plan to add some news sections to my infinity journal that I made for my study at the American Academy of Bookbinding five years ago.

  • 00:36 (these links open on YouTube) – Meshes inspired by the Japanese wave pattern
  • 02:18 – Making paper with an A6-sizes mold
  • 02:40 – Making round paper
  • 05:54 – Difference between the simplified papermaking molds and the 3d-printed molds inspired by the classic wood and wire molds
  • 11:04 – Molds for making paper of odd shapes: tag and firtree
  • 16:19 – Meshes inspired by the Japanese Asanoha pattern
  • 24:08 – First time using ironing press to dry the newly made paper
  • 26:07 – Star-shaped mold
  • 26:16 – Mold for making paper for a paper lamp
  • 26:42 – Live stream ends, but the audio continues!
  • 27:36 – About the current paper pulp mix
  • 29:16 – Photos of the dried sheets a paper made during the stream

 

2019.10.30 - Digitized - November-1901 Issue of the Russian Magazine Printing Art (Печатное искусство)

Digitization/ History of Printing/ Papermaking

Digitized: December’1901 Issue of the Russian Magazine ‘Printing Art’ (“Печатное искусство”)

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This vintage Russian magazine about printing was published for only two years, but it already gave me a lot of insights into the epoch. This time we share the second issue of the first year of publishing: December 1901. As with the other non-English editions we publish, we encourage you to browse it even if you don’t know the language.

Among other things, you’ll find some photos showing the Russian fin de siècle papermaking industry:

You’ll find all other issues we have already digitized here.

As usual, the book is already available to our patrons at Patreon with pledges of $5 per month or more. Or you can buy this book separately on our Issuu page.

2019.10.21 - Making Shaped Paper with Shaped Papermaking Molds

3d-Printed Tools/ Papermaking

Making Shaped Paper with Shaped Papermaking Molds

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Cutting shaped paper? That’s boring! Much more fun making paper in a way that it is already shaped to the desired pattern right from the very beginning — when the papermaking mold forms it.

That’s what was the main idea of an experiment, that in reality, is a continuation of our 3d-printed papermaking molds project.

When last year, we started designing and selling 3d-printed molds for making paper, the initial idea was to make the process of creating watermarked paper easier and cheaper. With 3d-printing, it’s much easier to turn almost any design into a watermark.

But it’s always interesting to go one step further. So the next idea was to design molds for shaped paper. The results are already quite promising, even while there are still many things to figure out. For example, how deep should the depression in the mold be to get paper of different density? Well, only future experiments will answer these questions.

And it retains that amazing artisanal deckled edge! What could be better?

If you are interested in the molds or the shaped paper, we sell both at our shop. And you can order paper made to almost any shape of your design and different sizes! However, if you want your paper to have lots of holes like lace, it may be more expensive compared to filled shapes without holes (see some samples in this post.) Of course, both the molds and the paper can be made with watermarks of your design.

2019.10.10 - Enchanting Drawings on My Handmade Paper

3d-Printed Tools/ Papermaking

Enchanting Drawings on My Handmade Paper

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My handmade paper recently received an impressive upgrade. Anastasia Golovina, an architect and an artist from Moscow, improved it with these enchanting houses. It is even more impressive as I never considered myself a true papermaker.

I’ve been making customized papermaking molds of different shapes and with varying watermarks for some time already. Obviously, I make paper to test the molds. To be sure that the customer will get a working tool. And the paper started to gather. Some of the samples I liked quite a lot. My favorite sheets were made with some recycled blue jeans.

During one of my visits to Moscow, I gave Anastasia several sheets of different shapes. Square, round, and something else. Hexagonal, I guess. And that’s what she made with two of them:

What I like the most is how the cotton grain enhances the drawings.

This finally made me consider requests from some of my customers to make not only the molds but the paper itself. As my specialty is 3d-printing molds for paper of customized shapes and with customized watermarks, that’s what I decided to focus on. Here are some first samples, all of them with deckled edges:

2019.08.30 - An Anime Series For Those Who Love Books and Bookmaking

News/ Papermaking/ Video

An Anime Series For Those Who Love Books and Bookmaking

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If you’re not already a fan, you likely think anime is all about fantastical adventures or about highly idealized life. But a new anime television series turns all of these expectations on their head, offering a wonderful visual journey of bookmaking for those like us who love books and everything about them. 

Ascendance of a Bookworm (out in Japan on October 2nd, 2019) chronicles a deep, passionate love of books. It manages to capture the process of bookmaking, to convey the significance of literature to our lives, and to do justice to what it’s like to love something deeply. Those of you who watch it will find a slightly fantastical setting that is real to us for the love of books it captures so perfectly. 

The original print series, a wildly popular light novel (a stand-alone illustrated anime novel) written by Miya Kazuki and illustrated by Yō Shiina, chronicles the adventures of a bonafide bookworm, whose one dying wish to reincarnate somewhere with lots of books is completely ignored as she is reborn in a world where books simply do not exist. Upon finding herself in this world, she is driven by her unyielding passion for books to singlehandedly bring into the world that which it so sorely lacks, and sets out to make books a reality. 

The series is considered very realistic and is adored by its reader because of how well it manages to capture the unique focus of the main character’s imagination as well as the practical ways in which she goes about correcting the absence she perceives in the world. 

Check out the trailer, and for those who aren’t interested in the print series (available online), or are interested in both, wait until October to see this much-awaited series come to life on TV!

2019.08.27 - Digitization or Restoration - The Sri Lanka Edition

Archival Work, Book Repair and Restoration/ Digitization/ History/ Papermaking

Digitization or Restoration? The Sri Lanka Edition

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All around the world, invaluable cultural resources are threatened by political conflict, environmental challenges, and instability. In Sri Lanka, grassroots efforts offer two important models of preservation of knowledge, wisdom, and skills.

Sri Lanka has a rich written tradition, at the center of which stand palmyra manuscripts. These labor-intensive documents are infinitely valuable because they contain anything from time-tested medicinal methods to community lore to legal and historical records of the families and area. Often, they serve for the preservation of history and customs, as well as passing on useful knowledge to healers and artisans. 

These palmyra manuscripts, like all things made by hand and passed down from generation to generation, are uniquely liable to perish. Whether that be through improper storage when members of the family stop caring. Or when conditions, such as armed conflict, lead to the mass destruction and neglect of the manuscripts. In Sri Lanka, (as profiled in this article by the Global Press) the protracted civil war led to an estimated hundreds of thousands of destroyed manuscripts in the Jaffna district alone. In response, community members and scholars alike are looking for ways to ensure their safety and restore this valuable written tradition. 

One way has been through digitization. Efforts by the Noolaham Foundation to set up a Digital Manuscripts Archive (started in 2018) have already led to the digitization of more than 30,000 manuscripts, with many more in the works. Researchers coordinate with families to clean and scan the document, as well as accepting manuscripts from larger established collections and scanning manuscripts that would otherwise languish without any readers. This method keeps the information on the manuscripts safe but often means the sequestering the manuscripts away in archives where they cannot be used by the families which rely on them and don’t participate in the living tradition of manuscripts written and based around.  

On the other hand, there are more traditional methods. Such as T. Koyilaar Sivasaamy’s efforts to restore from memory hundreds of religious manuscripts. However, while immensely important because they ensure that these documents flourish in their local settings, they lack the security of digitized manuscripts. If there will be another conflict, these too will be lost.

Ideally, as digitization efforts continue, they will have to find a balance with the local communities whose materials they attempt to preserve. A balance through which these manuscripts can continue to be, in Sivasaamy’s words, is indeed”something saturated within us.”

Further Reading:

2019.08.01 - An Ancient Material is Being Put to a Bookish Use

Archival Work, Book Repair and Restoration/ Paper Repair and Restoration/ Papermaking

Washi – An Ancient Material is Being Put to a Bookish Use

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Washi is the traditional Japanese paper that has long been a hallmark of Japanese daily life. Used for everything from writing to the iconic Japanese screen construction, it is falling out of favor as Japanese society westernizes. However, some makers of washi remain hopeful that the unique properties of washi will gain it new popularity as it is put to use in the conservation of rare and valuable art and paper items. 

One of these artisans, quoted in a recent article in the Jakarta Post (link here), is Hiroyoshi Chinzei. A Seattle business school graduate who returned to his family’s traditional craft despite the decline in demand for the paper. In his shop, washi is manufactured through a laborious handmade process using long-fibered plants such as kozo, or mulberry. It allows the material to retain integrity in a way that western paper does not. The latter quickly disintegrates into tiny pieces when it reaches old age.

Washi is often dubbed “the world’s thinnest paper.” Chinzei’s variety, tengu-joshi washi, is 0.02 millimeters thick and weighs 1.6 grams per square meter. As opposed to standard paper, which is thicker and weighs 70 grams per square meter. 

Chinzei sees washi as offering a solution to conservation problems unaddressed by traditional paper. Washi, for example, is so flexible that it can fit into the crevices and nooks of intricate statues in a way that other papers cannot.

Since sheets of washi paper are uniquely translucent, washi can be used to sandwich decaying pages, reinforcing them while ensuring visibility of the encased text. 

Naturally, materials come in and out of fashion. However, with these remarkable abilities to its advantage, it is not surprising if Chinzei’s craft continues to be relevant and useful, whether that be in conservation or elsewhere. And in that, there’s still room for hope.

Read More

Top image: Papermaking at “Kodate’s Craft Museum” in Echizen City, Fukui Prefecture by Wikipedia user TR15336300101 CC BY-SA

2019.07.30 - Summer Vacation Discount at iBookBinding Store!

3d-Printed Tools/ Blog/ Corner Cutting Jig/ Digitization/ Papermaking/ Tools

Summer Vacation Discounts at iBookBinding Store!

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I’m on vacation until the 18th of August, and this means that all orders at our shop will be processed after I come back to the Netherlands. However, I’d like to offer you a 15%-discount valid for all items at our Etsy shop.

Please use the code SUMMER2019 or follow the link to activate the discount: https://www.etsy.com/shop/iBookBindingStore?coupon=SUMMER2019

By the way, starting this summer, we have free worldwide shipping for all the items!

Some of Our Bestsellers

Corner Cutting Jigs

Corner cutting jigs are designed to make easy cutting away the corners of turn-in material of your cover. These tools are sold in multiple sizes starting with 1 mm and up to 6 mm thick. Sizes correspond to the thickness of the cardboard you use for the covers of the book. Read more here.

Papermaking Molds

Papermaking molds with watermarks of your design (or without watermarks). 3d-printing makes it much easier and cheaper to create molds for making paper with custom watermarks or of some non-standard shape. We offer molds for making paper from 10×10 cm in size up to 37×37 cm. Each of them may be customized with your watermark, shaped to some geometric figure, or, for example, changed to make several business cards with a single mold. Please read more here.

Book Scanning Frames

This is pretty self-explanatory. The frame allows for scanning books with your smartphone. Smart, fast, and not as expensive as other solutions. With excellent end-result quality (depending on the phone you use). Find more information here.

You will find many more useful tools and jigs at our Etsy store.

Discount code: SUMMER2019

The code is valid until the 14th of August.

French Paper Industry Bulletin 'Papyrus' - 1930.08

Digitization/ Papermaking

French Paper Industry Bulletin ‘Papyrus’ – August 1930

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One of my recent finds during the trip to Romania was a convoluted collection of the French paper industry edition Papyrus from 1931 that included one additional issue from 1930. This is the first digitized issue from that collection.

I’m always curious to check vintage industry magazines as they tend to cover the contemporary innovation and state of minds. Sometimes they offer more info about what was happening at that time in the country and the world than history books.

This issue, for example, covers state of the US box industry of the late 1920s. Alas, it’s in French… =)

As usual, our patrons at Patreon with pledges of $5 per month or more can download this book during the upcoming three months free of charge. This book is available for a small fee at our Issuu page as well. The text is OCRed.

11th year of publication of the Papyrus. Issue #125.

See some sample pages below:

Get the Publication

2019.05.12 - My Teenage Daughter Made a YouTube Video About Making Paper!

Papermaking/ Video/ Video Tutorials

My Teenage Daughter Made a YouTube Video About Making Paper and I Love It!

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My kids visited me in the Netherlands for a week and among other things we made some paper. My daughter made a YouTube video about that!

Well, video is in Russian but it seems to me it is done quite well, which makes it almost self-explanatory.

I probably have to add only one thing about the mix we used. It was 20% old jeans cotton cloth and 80% recycled paper.

Here it is:

2019.03.25 - Available Now - Molds for Paper of Custom Shapes

3d-Printed Tools/ Papermaking

Available Now: Molds for Paper of Custom Shapes

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The work on new designs and updates of already available items never stops. A recent addition to our Etsy shop is a range of papermaking molds that allow you to make paper with different outlines: basic geometric shapes and much more!

This is an offshoot of a project with 3d-printed molds and shaped paper we are working on at the moment. Hopefully, we would be able to share some results with you pretty soon. But even this new update to our stock is exciting enough and was asked for by some of our customers for some time.

First, we added three sizes of square molds: for 10×10 cm sheets of paper, 20×20 cm sheets of paper, and 30×30 sheets of paper.

The molds that allow you to make paper of other geometrical shapes are compatible with the ones about and are priced the same. At the moment round and hexagonal shapes were tested. However, there are almost no limits to what may be 3d-printed.

If you’d like to save a bit, we have an additional offer: spare molds sold without deckles. You need to buy only one full set with mold and deckle, and all other molds would be compatible with the same size of the deckle.

And, of course, each of these molds may be ordered with a watermark of your design!

Below you will find a demonstration of how our simplified papermaking mold and deckle work:

2019.03.06 - Creating a Recycled Paper Wave

Papermaking/ Video

Creating a Recycled ‘Paper Wave’

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I’m proud to be friends with the guy in the video below. He’s the executive director of SOEMZ, an experimental factory in the Moscow region that produces different stuff with the molded fiber material (recycled paper.)

He and his colleagues are doing an impressive job. In a country where less than 10% of waste is recycled, they are pushing their innovative ideas to multiple customers. And they are recognized in countries far from Russia as well. They have partners in Hungary, Germany, Moldova, Ukraine, and USA.

I wanted to write about Dmitry Gutman and SOEMZ since long time ago, but here is a good chance. In this video, they show a new product they called Paper Wave. Who doesn’t like bubble wrappers? The idea is similar, although you cannot pop the Paper Wave (what a pity!)

Here is a video about cardboard corners used for shipping produced by IKEA. They tell about their partnership with SOEMZ there and show some of the processes. It’s in Russian, but some of the things are quite obvious.

Next time I should talk more with Dmitry about how the production of recycled paper material works.

Have you ever tried making something with recycled paper? I mean, besides recycled paper?

2019.03.01 - Cotton with 1 Percent Elastane

Papermaking

Cotton with 1% Elastane – Would that Affect the Paper Made Out of It?

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Every time I sell a papermaking mold, I make some recycled paper to test it. Initially, I used only some leftover paper like bills or misprints, but at some moment last autumn I added pieces of my old blue T-shirt and I loved the result!

Since that moment I tried to add parts of different used clothes to the mix. I even bought some new cotton cloth to widen the variety of colors. But here is the thing I haven’t tried to make paper with: my wife’s old jeans.

All of the previous clothes were 100% cotton. Even if they had some paint on the chest, I guess the percentage of the plastic material was insignificant.

The label states that the jeans are almost pure cotton. But there’s 1% of elastane added. Would that affect the paper in any major way?

Do you have any experience with handmade paper with larger quantities of plastic materials added?

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