I’ve taken up a new hobby in which I can utilize my speck of creativity and natural talent for following instructions. I am such a renaissance man! In honesty I’m more like the guy who got paid a tiny amount to grind the pigment that was mixed with others by a paint maker who the supplied some illustrious Italian master.
The hobby mentioned above is marbling paper. Marbled end-sheets are something I’ve always loved seeing when perusing an old book. The patterns always seemed to be works of ordered randomness with sweep and coloration that are most pleasing. A month or so ago I was at a hotel where an artisan conference had a room where people were selling their wares. One woman marbled not just paper but fabric and leather and I found my love for it hadn’t diminished.
After that I went home and looked up marbling on the web like any good resident of the 21st century would. The process didn’t seem to involve any skills I don’t have like drawing, painting, or imagination. That’s not to say people with those qualifications don’t make excellent marbled papers but just that I could probably put together something that didn’t offend. The next step was to get the supplies and being who I am the research took several hours. I peered at many sites and compared prices and inventory. In the end I got a starter kit from Galen Berry who is a well-known marbler in the United States. I picked out the paint colors I wanted and zipped off an email. Due to the cold weather they didn’t want to ship the stuff until the thermometer took an upward stretch so I had to wait a week or so. Despite the hesitation it arrived the day after a major snow storm which meant that my snow day could be filled with learning how to work this magic.
I’m not going to bore you too much with a history of marbled paper (and other substrates) but I will throw a few facts in here. It began with a process called suminagashi in China over 2,000 years ago but is associated with Japan since it was practiced widely there. The technique traveled the silk trade routes and eventually landed in Turkey. This brought forth the kind of patterns we most often think of when visualizing marbling but the Turkish art of Ebru is far more than that and is worth taking a look at. The video below shows an artist creating some of these works.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgg0GIfbszg
Eventually the technique migrated to Europe in the 17th century when travelers were exposed to both the process and the end result. Artisans guarded their techniques but late in the mid-19th century a book was published laying out the process for all to see.
While on the topic of the process it’s really deceptively simple. Paint or ink is floated on top of a liquid and then are manipulated using tools to make the patterns. In my case I use acrylic paints applied to a thickened pool of water. The thickening is accomplished using carrageenan which is the stuff that also is used to make foods goopy. The inks are applied in several ways with brushes made out of broom straw (actually, they are shaken and don’t touch the liquid) or eye droppers. After that there is a bevy of tools to rake, comb, curl, and speckle until you get a design you love.
Below are a few pictures from one of my sessions just to give you a rough idea of a few steps in the process. I’ve been having fun and hope to improve my skills with time.
I’ll admit right off that I’m biased. I have two suppliers when I need something to write on: Crane for more formal stationary and Clairefontaine for daily use items like notebooks or pads. That’s why when I discovered the Vice President of Marketing at Exaclair (who distributes Rhodia and Clairefontaine products in the U.S.), Karen Doherty, was offering a notebook for review I jumped on it.
Not too long later I received an example of Clairefontaine’s “Basics” cloth-bound journal in the 6 x 8 ¼ inch size. Looking at the attractive, understated textured brown cover and smooth white, ruled sheets I thought: “So, how do I review this?” Originality is not my strongpoint so I’m going to do what everyone else does with this kind of thing.
First, let’s take a look at the journal itself. It’s spine shows that, indeed, this is clothbound with sewn signatures. When open it’s pretty flexible and lies rather flat. Still, there is a bit of a peak to the page edges nearest the spine but I found this acceptable in this type of binding.
Attractive looking journal, I think. (click for larger image. ditto for all pics here)
The paper is 23lb high resistant, pH neutral, white vellum (yes, I got that from a sales blurb) and, as usual, a delight. The wonderfully fountain pen friendly sheets between the covers are the reason I’ve bought Clairefontaine products for so many years. Since I’ve never found a more satisfying paper then this, which you’ll find in many of their products, I haven’t much in the way of criticism.
With that love fest over let’s put some ink on the paper. I used a variety of fountain pens from a Vacumatic with one of my finest (width) nibs to a Danitrio that puts down a small river of ink. As expected feathering is almost non-existent and bleed through very minor in my simple test. One could not ask for more in something like this.
Fine to medium nib samples.Nibs that put a good deal of ink down.I see almost no feathering on this paper.This is the back of the page with the high ink-flow nibs. Amazing there's so little ink to see.
The journal itself does not look or feel “basic” in the least. The grained cardboard covers feel good and are flexible. Rounded corners are another little extra that helps to raise this item above the fray. While this Clairefontaine journal is not incredibly fancy or hand crafted it’s sturdy and delivers in all the important areas. I’d even buy one…but first I’m going to enjoy this free one.
I don’t plan on reviewing very much in the way of stationary in the future. There are far better places for that such as Biffybeans’ blog. In this case my experiences with the subject of this post have been different than what I’ve generally read so I’m hoping my observations might lend some balance.
Ranking second only to sliced bread in the pantheon of ingenious inventions is lined paper. For people such as myself who are lucky just to be able to walk in a straight line much less write one it is a godsend. There doesn’t seem to be many drawbacks to having those medium blue lines trek across the face of one’s paper but a couple have been mentioned. Aesthetically it detracts from what is written if you, unlike me, write in a beautiful hand. In a more practical sense those gentle blue rules will bisect your page as annoying black slashes when you copy or fax the sheet. Compared to poverty, hunger, and disease these problems are minor and there hasn’t been much of a drive to solve them. However, do not despair; one person has been working on a way to make these foibles just a memory! The fruits of that labor have been sitting on my desk for the last few days.
It started when a friend (hello, Caloy) asked me if I’d heard about the “Whitelines” stationary he’d recently read about. I had not but a quick trip to Google salved my curiosity. Whitelines is a name that says all you need to know about this paper’s major claim to fame. As you might expect the rules on the sheet, either in a grid or as lines, are white. The rest of the sheet is a very light gray which does not xerographically reproduce. How can a line be white, you ask? Is the paper totally gray and those lines overprinted with white ink? Could a bleaching process be in use to fade in those rules? Or could pulp possibly, in some miraculous way, be laid on the wire with white and gray fibers in the proper positions during the papermaking process? Read on to discover this terrible secret!
Google told me that it all started when Swedish designer Olof Hansson got irritated when some photocopies of sketches had those pesky lines appear, black as night, and ruin the integrity of his designs. It was at this juncture his “eureka” moment occurred and the idea of the reversed-out line came to be. After patenting the idea for the Whitelines…er…line a company sprang into being.
So I became intrigued and started looking for somewhere that sold this paper in the United States. Problematically, it’s not widely marketed in North America but I did find one outlet that carried it: Wet Paint. They are a retailer of art supplies in Saint Paul, Minnesota who for reasons unknown also carry this product. Whitelines comes in glued, stapled, wire and perfect bindings in a number of sizes. It’s not exactly cheap to purchase but not so expensive as to enter the luxury goods arena. I bought several of the glue bound A4 pads both lined and with the grid. As long as I was at it I also bought a small pocket notebook to keep my pocket from getting lonely. Since then I discovered that Whitelines has teamed with a U.S. distributor, Consortium Book Sales, so in the future it may be easier for us Yanks to find.
Wet Paint was out of stock at the time of my order so I had to do what I hate most: wait. Eventually the box did show up and in it were pads that did indeed have lines that were white. Closer examination determined that really there were rectangles or squares of gray and line shaped areas of exposed paper. The answer to all my questions was simple: a 10% screen of black (a very rough approximation since I left my tools to check this back with my career in printing) is offset printed on the paper to form the darker surface area. Oh well, it was fun to imagine little gnomes with tiny brushes and cans of white paint while I could.
How it's done: The magic of old printing technology.
First impressions of the 40 sheet pad were that the paper was moderately rough and quite thin. My favorite papers have always been either Clairefontaine or something formal and substantial from Crane (they make the U.S. currency paper, don’t cha know.) As a comparison the Clairefontaine stock in the standard pads that I use is 90g/m2 while Whitelines is somewhat thinner at 80g/m2. The feel of the former’s paper is also quite different being smooth (possibly lightly coated with kaolin) and brilliantly white which gives it a tactile richness not matched by our new gray friend.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say, so let’s grab our spoon and dig in before I strain this proverb any further. For this unscientific and haphazard test I grabbed a few fountain pens that had differing nibs and wrote on the Whitelines paper a sentence each in my terrible handwriting. Starting at the top with a fine point I finished at the bottom with a music nib to test the paper’s handling of differing widths and ink flows. The paper felt a bit inexpensive as it had more tooth than I am used to and a coarse feel under my hand as it glided across. A few curves were added last and I traced them several times to force some bleed through.
Writing samples on Whitelines paper. (click for larger image)
The results were quite unexpected and disappointing. A fountain pen site had some comments where this paper was given generally good reviews and said to be fountain pen friendly. I found it to be quite the opposite with most all the samples feathering and penetrating through to the back. I admit I wrote at a deliberate pace but this performance would never have occurred on the beloved Clairefontaine. My Danitrio is currently filled with J. Herbin Lie de Thé which seems to have transformed it from ink flow challenged to a virtual inkaholic, and thus it shows the most spreading. The images illustrate my observations so enjoy the sentence repetition!
The bleeding edge: A lot of show-through on back of sample. (click for larger image)A closer look at the top.A closer look at bottom.An even closer look at how the thin and thick lines feather.
In the end my Clairefontaine doesn’t have to worry about being eased out of its frontline duties. Whitelines leaves me ambivalent having those appealing lines that fade away to leave the ink to bask in its own colorant but such a poor performing substrate. I’ll keep using this with my fine and medium points, though, since in the end the novelty of having Whitelines with white lines hasn’t worn off yet. Plus you never know when some lines will ruin your copies.
Update 4/1/09
I did these tests on the Whitelines grid ruled pad. A few days later I took one of the normal ruled pads and did some doodling. I found this pad to have paper that was more resistant to bleed and show-through. Is the paper quality inconsistent? I’m not sure, but I think it’s not a good sign that I could have two pads from the same manufacturer that differ like this. In the end I guess, as with anything, your milage may vary.
