Donald Farnsworth 2018 Good paper, a few scratches in black ink, some red to set off the black, and there (as Aesculapius had the habit of saying to Thessalonians) you are. In short, ‘let paper do most of the work.’ Oswald Cooper MAGNOLIA EDITIONS 2527 Magnolia St, Oakland CA 94607 www.magnoliapaper.com Copyright © 2018 Donald Farnsworth, all rights reserved. Any person is hereby authorized to view, copy, print and distribute this document for information- al and non-commercial purposes only. Any copy of this document or portion thereof must include this copyright notice. Unless otherwise noted all photo credit: Donald Farnsworth Method Cinquecento Donald S. Farnsworth 2018 Black and red quarried chalk, chalk holders, linen and hemp paper 4 Contents Introduction 4 Research & re-creation 6 Papermaking methods 8 I: Felt Hair Marks 9 The search for coarse heritage wool felts 12 Coarsely-toothed paper with felt hair marks 14 A closer look at the gift of paper texture 16 Graphite tests on modern vs felt hair marked papers 17 Intimate viewing distance 18 II: Back Marks 19 Back – Derivation 20 Back mark – Formation 22 Back mark – Citations 23 Back mark’s mechanical advantage 24 Finding depictions of back marks 25 Back mark location in period documents 26 Book formats 27 Back marks: folio 28 Back marks: quarto 29 Wandering back marks 30 Back marks in works on paper 32 The unavoidable back mark 33 Back marks within a spur 35 Back marks: Works on paper – full sheets 36 Distinguishing back marks... 40 III: Paper’s Two-Sidedness 43 Paper’s two-sidedness... 44 Wire or felt side: which did Renaissance... 46 Two-sidedness, back marks and a folded corner 47 Forensic wire and felt side identification 48 Wire & felt side color & value shift 50 IV: Process 53 List of Textural Artifacts 54 Fiber preparation: letting microbes... 55 Beating and Sheet Formation 56 Drying and sizing 58 V: Freeness, Linen, Hemp and Cotton 61 The importance of freeness confirmed by science 62 More about linen, hemp and cotton 64 Cutting natural red chalk 66 VI: Media Tests 67 Selected Bibliography 76 Notes 77 Acknowledgments 78 5 Introduction esearch & re-creation: Renaissance-style of chalk twice, as the underlying paper texture that paper for contemporary artists defines the stroke is never the same. While most hu- R A historical thread passes through the last two thou- mans may now regard paper artifacts as undesirable sand years of papermaking like an endless strand of prayer beads – each bead a gift passed from maker to maker, progressively modified with the addition and subtraction of ideas and technique, revising our idea of what was and what is traditional handmade paper. Like a giant post of paper reaching to the heavens, you can witness the physical changes, see the subtle textures transition, feel and hear the rattle change pitch and imagine the ever-dripping wet process morphing before your eyes with the passing of time. I hope in these chapters to take you back down this high-rise of stacked reams in succession – not all the way back to paper’s birth in Asia, but five centuries Museum wall text for this Michelangelo drawing describes the back in time to the Renaissance, where water-driven medium as “Red chalk over black-chalk underdrawing” with no hammers are pounding away, and makers in repeti- description or even a mention of the “support” – the sheet of paper tive toil are forming and couching sheets, determined that provided an important textural counterpoint to the maestro’s to make their quota of paper for the day. mark-making (a most intriguing sheet – see p. 36). A standard- ized syntax would allow an exhibition of works on paper to provide more descriptive commentary on the paper’s characteristics. The re-creating of this early European paper re- quires us to jettison much of the generally accept- flaws, it is possible that some Renaissance artists se- ed doctrine of the late 19th-century Arts and Crafts lected a sheet precisely because it possessed an intrigu- papermaking revival, which has guided most hand- ing, idiosyncratic and unique texture. made papermakers for the last century. A studio with the appropriate pre-industrial devices must be The lack of extant research and scholarship regarding assembled1: in particular, I have found that non-wo- important artifacts in paper reflects an unfortunate ven, coarse, heritage wool felts are one of the most art-historical tendency to ignore the sheet entirely important tools necessary to reach beyond the pre- when exhibiting works on paper – often recording the dictable surface textures of Arts and Crafts-style medium as simply “ink” or “black chalk” with barely a paper. Meanwhile, dispensing with the axiom that mention of the ground upon which this pigment rests. “paper is made in the beater,” I have come to believe that paper is actually made in the compost bin – i.e., during the retting process. In my quest to produce a decent sheet of linen, hemp and sisal paper that looks, feels, and reacts like the paper an Old Master may have used, I have made hundreds of flaws in the paper and at every stage of the process (Figure 7, p. 52). Every naturally occur- ring and handmade flaw is instructional and some, if not most, are desirable. Such marks create a var- ied landscape like a unique fingerprint in every sheet of paper, reminiscent of the Heraclitan maxim: “You can not step twice in the same river.” Likewise, on What would an Old Master drawing in “red chalk” look like with- cinquecento paper one cannot draw the same stroke out paper? This pile of chalk offers one distinctly underwhelming possibility. 6 It is easy to erroneously assume that Renaissance pa- My goal, however, is not to radically change anyone’s pers were made in accordance with homogeneous and opinion of a particular paper or to divine the reasons standardized contemporary handmade or industrial an artist of the Renaissance may have chosen a spe- paper processes – yet there is a visible and significant cific sheet (e.g., surface texture, dimensions, weight, difference between their heterogeneous landscapes economic necessity, scarcity, availability, etc.) – but and the relatively dull and predictable surfaces of rather, to make a similar, coarsely hair-textured hand- the papers marketed to contemporary artists. Thus made paper available to artist friends and colleagues. the lasting aura and appeal of Renaissance drawings Artists’ cravings and desires haven’t changed all that must be attributed, at least in part, to the unique qual- much over the past 500 years – simply offer a contem- ities of that era’s paper. Sadly, it seems quite likely porary artist a sheet of interesting, unique and versa- that conservators and misdirected “restorers” of an tile paper and their eyes light up, their spirits lifted earlier era, unaware of artifacts such as the loft drying as they contemplate the paper’s potential, like a carv- back mark (p. 22), might have encountered such marks er who looks at a block of marble and sees the Pietà (misidentifying as a crease) and used moistening, re- ready to emerge. The goal of my quest is to deliver to laxing and flattening to rid the work of such a “flaw” this community an anti-corporate, non-Arts-&-Crafts- – thus unwittingly reinventing and smoothing the his- Movement, non-Industrial-Revolution paper which tory of the work. Perhaps more information, attention, will receive chalk and ink marks as rugged yet beau- and insight will one day subvert and kill the contem- tifully as some papers did five hundred years ago: a porary confusion or indifference to the substrate that paper with tantalizing flaws and inconsistencies. documents our world and which the Old Masters em- ployed to such great effect. Many surviving Old Master drawings are stunning in their facility and draftsmanship, while others are Treasured cinquecento works on paper were not merely dashed off sonnets, scribbles, and to-do lists; created by a single hand. They represent an indirect hand-manufactured sheets of paper lent a gravitas to collaboration between the artist; the shepherds; full- both the scribble and the masterpiece. It was in part- ers and felters; the rag men; the people who carded, nership with these papers – whether because of or in wove and made the linen and hemp garments; those spite of their idiosyncratic surfaces – that the Old Mas- who wore, used and laundered the cloth - softening ters sketched ideas, thought out loud, captured mo- and fraying the fibers, transitioning new cloth to ments or furiously scribbled their laundry lists. Thus rags; the paper mill equipment designers and fabri- the 16th century sheet became a versatile, flexible, cators (vat, press and mould, etc.); the workers at the portable, and archival vehicle for memories lasting a mill; the makers of animal-hair ropes; and of course, thousand years. the workers quarrying natural chalk, the conveyanc- ers and so on. Discovering more about the genesis Renaissance papers retain a visible of a single sheet can provide a window into the en- tire world surrounding a five-hundred-year-old art- memory of their own making; since work’s creation. back marks, felt hair marks, laid Rather than relegating paper to the category of “sup- lines, drip and couching flaws, finger port,” we must develop a descriptive terminology and handprints and other artifacts of and standardized syntax to document the surface production are the language in which and physical attributes of a sheet – especially when those qualities profoundly effect the characteristics this memory is encoded, learning to of any mark made by an artist.