refined artisanal papers from local plants
Chemical Information
-
Our pulps are all made with municipal drinking water, from the City of Northampton, MA, U.S.A. Here is the current water quality report. When tested with Insta-test5plus strips, the water reads: free chlorine .5ppm; Total Chlorine .5ppm; Alkalinity 80ppm; pH 7.2; Total Hardness 0ppm.
-
The collected plant material is cooked with washing soda, and rinsed by machine, after being neutralized with household vinegar.
-
Our Itadori and Eualia pulps are made without a beater, by action of chlorine bleach. When dispersed in a vat of our water and tested with Insta-test5plus strips, the water reads: free chlorine 0ppm; Total Chlorine .5ppm; Alkalinity 80ppm; pH 7.2; Total Hardness 0ppm. Don't ask me how the vat with the pulp has less free chlorine than the plain water! I think this shows the varied accuracy of the strips.
-
Finished sheets of 100% Itadori with no additives tested a pH testing pen read acidic, so if you need your paper to be archival, you will want to add some washing soda or other alkaline buffer.
-
No laboratory testing has been done on our pulps or papers. (If you do any, we would love to know the results!)
Ecological Information
-
Our pulp and papers are made in an artisan workshop, with tools as low tech as we can manage.
-
Plants are harvested by hand with knives or sickles, and transported by van. Itadori is harvested less than 2 miles from the studio, some of it one block down the street; some eulalia is harvested on our property, some about 5 miles away. Trimmed parts of invasive plants are composted in areas where the plants already grow. All other waste plant materials are composted for garden use. Other plants, used in charitable cards, are harvested around the neighborhood, except for corn. That comes from a neighborhood farm stand, whose corn is grown in the nearest farming community.
-
Cooking of plants is done on high efficiency induction cookers, in stainless steel pots.
-
All of our electricity is generated by a utility using only renewable wind and solar.
-
Soak and fermentation water is poured on the garden.
-
Cooking liquor is sent to the water treatment plant via the municipal sewer system, as is used bleach. Our volume of use of the household chemicals of washing soda, vinegar and bleach is roughly equal to a household washing diapers for an infant.
-
Here in New England, we usually have plentiful water. Still, we are mindful of conservation, and annually use an amount roughly equal to one adult's shower per day. We have consistently and successfully worked to lower our water use, and we reduce overall production in drought years.