Ritchie's Video 'N Print Division of Emeralda Works 500 Aloha #105 Seattle, WA 98109

Paper Making with Laurence Barker

Featuring Laurence Barker and Jackie Parry in Spain, 1983.

Transcription Copyright 1993 By Bill H. Ritchie, Jr.

Bill Ritchie voice-over introduction to the audiotape:

Hi, my name is Bill Ritchie. Print making and paper have been associated arts and crafts from the time paper was invented. Prints come alive on paper, you might say, and that is why paper making is part of Living Prints history.

I made this video in 1983 with Laurence Barker in the city of Barcelona in Spain. He is visited by an artist from Scotland. She's only one of many who make this sojourn to Barcelona to learn from Barker in his studio.

Now here's the video. It's mostly visual, so you'll hear my voice telling you as best I can what is on the video screen. Here is the sound track from "Paper Making with Laurence Barker," a thirty-minute, color video from the Living Prints Series.

The video opens with a view of the studio which is on the ground floor of the high-rise where Barker lived at that time.

(Bill Ritchie narrates: Laurence Barker has his studio for his own work in Barcelona. He's a natural born artist and other artists come from around the world to learn more about his special craft. He has studio designed to produce prints and a large area of his studio is designed to be used for hand-made paper. For years Barker taught in an art academy in the US. So he knows the craft of teaching as much as he knows the crafts of his artistry.)

(In the background are the voices of artists explaining things about the studio, such as that of Mary Scott.)

Mary Scott:  "We're not quite sure if the pigments we have here are dyes or not because . . ."

(Bill Ritchie narrates: The combination of his knowledge of art, the craft of paper making and his special gift for teaching provides people who come to him with a great latitude for experimentation as well as production.)

Woman's voice: - I, um, not my own place. I go up to a place in New York and work with people I like very much . . .

(Another artist visiting at the time was Allegra Ockler from the United States.)

Allegra Ockler: " . . . it's Dieu Donné (http://www.dieudonne.org/) - have you heard of them? Barker knows them.

Bill Ritchie: Did you make them elsewhere, or did you make them up here?

(The scene changes to show another artist, Czashka Ross, who was finishing her stay at Barker's studio.)

Czashka Ross: I made them up in my studio at home - in New York.

(She shows her technique using squeeze bottles.)

Czashka Ross: And that is what gives it the gelatinous look and it's linen, verses cotton. Extremely beaten.

(Laurence Barker enters the studio door.)

(Bill Ritchie narrates: I visited Barker's studio, not as an artist with a project I needed Laurence Barker for, but a visitor with a video camera. I arrived at the same time as Jackie Parry from Scotland. So I was able to record their first meeting and most of the steps in making paper according to Jackie's interests.)

Laurence Barker explaining to Parry: This beater has a ten kilo capacity. Okay? So, perhaps we'll put in there maybe no more than 600 grams - of corduroy.

(Ritchie narrating: It's not easy to walk into a paper making facility with such diverse opportunities and choose from among all the possibilities there. So Barker learns beforehand whether or not artists and students who write to him can handle the responsibilities of the art. Having satisfied himself that there is a direction with which he can help, he then provides the support each one comes for.)

Barker: . . . animates the paper. The papers we make are waterleaf papers, un-sized - as a rule. I have internal size available. I use it once in a while, but generally ours is a world of print making - so a very soft paper seems to be indicated for maximum absorption of the printing inks.

This is what I would like to ask you: What kind of paper would you like to make? What would you like to come out of here with?

Jackie Parry: You mean in terms of an object? An actual thing . . .. (She has an Australian accent, where she lived and where she was educated before she moved to Scotland.)

Barker: Things, or papers, or you want to make some . . . do you want to do sheet-making along the way?

Parry: I'd like to try to make a few sheets and I would like to try to see how fine a sheet I could make.

Barker: Fine, meaning thin?

Parry: Yeah.

Barker: Fine, meaning very short fibers, or what?

Parry: Fine meaning thin. And, then, I would like to do something myself with pulp. Maybe some kind of relief form or maybe even totally flat or in stencils. And color. And I'd like to use some color . . . I don't have anything with me, but my etching tools . . .

Barker: No no no - we have all the colored rag . . ..

Parry: I really would like to learn about color and learn what kind of color to use because I've had problems with color being fugitive.

Barker: The source of all my new rag, of all my colored rag, is . . . all my rag comes from a manufacture of women's clothing, about five blocks from here. So I can get all his remnants and all his cuttings, then I have them cut up by a man in Sol DeVille (Spelling?).

Well they're new rag. They're new cotton and things like that. So if - to make a bright sheet of paper that is bright red, would mean a preponderant amount - not six-hundred grams out of the ten kilos. That would give us a pale pink paper, but then suddenly I would be up to four or five kilos of red. From the color angle, no problem. But you're altering the balance of old rag to new rag.

So if you said that you wanted a crisp, "rattle-ly" parchment-like bright red paper there would be no problem.

(Scene changes to the sorting and weighing of rags in bags. You hear the rustling of the sacks.)

(Ritchie narrates: Around the studio are bags and bags of rags and Laurence Barker gives Jackie Parry a large bag of red rags and starts putting them into the plastic bags getting ready to weigh them out.)

Barker: Pull this up and hang on to it for a second. If you wanted to fill this directly here so we have a kilo and a half. Hang on to it. We're going to make - be making some sheets shortly. The question is: do you want to add a white pulp to this, or white rag?

Parry: White rag to that just now?

Barker: Yes then it could beat for an hour. While we are doing other things.

Parry: Yes, we could.

Barker: All right, first things first. Why don't you measure out a kilo of white.

(Barker is also helping the other artists. He then returns to explain the adjusting of the paper beater.)

(Ritchie narrates: Some of the other artists are heard in the background in this video tape as they're finishing up their projects.)

Barker: Anyway we're at fifteen, you turn it on and feed the rag and set the clock after you've done your -. Wait a sec, wait a sec. Set the clock now why don't you. I'll do it, I just wouldn't want you to get in the habit of . . . when you're doing cycles. Just start . . ..

(The paper beater is very loud; Barker explains making shaped-paper to Parry. He has to shout to be heard.)

(Ritchie narrates: From this point on the noise in the background of the studio from the paper mill is so loud you can barely hear what Laurence Barker and Jackie Parry are saying. On the video screen, you see the paper mill. It's called a Hollander beater. The purpose of the Hollander beater is to grind or macerate the rags as they float through the water. It's a large tub with drums of steel revolving at high speed. The water and the rag particles are pulled through the drums and beaten again and again until the fibers are short.)

Barker: Take any piece of paper. Draw a shape you like. Cut it out. Lay it down on your screen - on the mold - and with masking tape, you work your way around the edge . . ..

Barker: Then you form a sheet, and it pulls away from the edge. Because the pulp wants to separate. It's simplicity itself. Then you then touch up. Then you couch under the blanket. Then you make an edition if you want.

(Ritchie narrates: Laurence Barker is showing Jackie Parry his prints and some of the cut paper templates that he used when he was making his prints by shaping the hand made paper. The video camera is showing close ups of his stamp and his signature and more parts of the innovative ways that Laurence Barker has put together his work.)

(Barker goes over to the paper mill and with a small jar dips out about two cups of the mixture of paper fiber and water and holds it up to the ceiling to the light so he can see through it and he could judge how far the process has gone along. He looks like a chemist in his science lab. He is explaining to Jackie Parry how long this beating process will go. According to the clock on the wall, several hours will pass before the project of beating the paper pulp is finished.)

(Mounds of foam begin to collect as the time goes by, probably from the residue of binder or glue or sizing that is in the rags. The video screen shows close-ups of this pretty pink foam, because Jackie Parry asked for using red rags for red paper. On her work table you see tables indicating the amounts of time and the pressure setting that she put the Hollander beater at while the process was going on. Laurence Barker shows her how to turn the wheel, how to set the measurements by the number of turns on the wheel which in turn puts the teeth of the revolving steel drums closer together to tighten the beating process. Hours pass, then Barker turns off the beater)

Barker: Ah - the sheer relief of it all.

(He is referring to the quiet after he turns off the noisy beater).

Parry: I know it.

(Ritchie narrates: On the video screen you see Jackie Parry attaching strips of masking tape cut into graceful forms, so that she could create sculptural pieces. She is attaching the masking tape to what is called the paper mold. A wire screen with a rigid underside reinforcing it.)

(The scene changes to Parry working on a design, in tape on the paper mold. Then the scene changes to Parry asking questions of Barker).

Parry: Do you make watermarks yourself?

Barker: I make watermarks myself. How do you make watermarks?

Parry: I don't yet. I've never have made one.

Barker: How would you go about making one?

Parry: I was wondering that - if you could screen print on to it, and block the mesh. If that would do it. You know, if you could use something else to block the mesh apart from doing that normally sewn with wire.

Barker: There are two basic ways: You can wind a design around pegs or nails or something of that sort - then sew that in place. Another technique is to cut a design out of flat ware, which is what I have of my small mold which you've seen floating around.

A third technique is very simple, it's kind of nifty. I'll explain why to you. It's using masking tape. Doesn't matter if I've ripped it. Because you put - you see - the first question Enrico Allegre (Spelling?) asked me - the man who made these - "How thick do you want your watermark?" Or perhaps he expressed it, "How, what thickness paper do you intend to make?"

I said right off the bat, "I can't answer, but generally speaking on the thick side," that's quite imprecise. So he made the watermark he makes. Which is beautiful, its a knot, and it's Barker you can - I have my name here - I took off my name and just left the knot, which is really quite nice. On very thin papers that would break - there would be a break in the paper. Because it's too thick for thin paper. But a very fine watermark will be too thin for thick paper - you won't see it.

Now, enter masking tape: Depending on the thickness of the paper you could make, so long as your watermark is of simple design, as you can see I have an L B, and I change them every so often - just out of masking tape. It may be four layers thick.

Or you could have a sheet of glass five or six or seven or eight layers - with a razor blade - cut out a similar design, now you have quiet a thick water mark, for a very thick paper. It's nifty.

For other reasons, you center it, you locate it, you burnish it on, then you can peal it off later and save it. In other words, no sewing. I've sewn back one of my marks and its disastrous. I mean, not disastrous, you put your eyes out, you can't see what you doing.

(The scene changes to the two getting ready to make paper.)

(Ritchie narrates: Now it's time to make paper. Barker goes over to the Hollander beater, to the large tub of water that contains the paper fibers. Dips them with a pan into a big bucket - after which he would take over to the paper making vat. Meanwhile Jackie Parry is sweeping the wool blankets that would be used to separate each sheets as they make the paper. Barker carries the bucket containing the fiber over to the vat and pours the fiber and water in. There really not very much fiber in the paper. He stirs it around and then he takes the mold and deckle assembly, dips it into the vat of water and fiber, lifts it to the surface, lets the water drain and sets it aside.)

Barker: "Red she said," (joking).

(The scene changes to the touch-up phase.)

Barker: You want this . . . this . . . you can start.

Parry: Do I take all the way or -?

(Ritchie narrates: The first papers that Jackie made were for sculpture, so she created sculptural shapes on the wire mold and now they remove the excess parts.)

Barker: Watch, there are number of ways you could do this. You can carefully lay your finger at a right angle on the sheet. So you have a number of slow curves in here, look, this is another way of pulling it away, see. Then you could back up into it, see, pull away and -. Don't think for this reason that the lines would come out too - too smooth. Okay. Now, you can take the other - well, I didn't do this too well - do you want me to touch up? Back in there, you can actually couch this.

(Ritchie narrates over Barker and Parry: Barker and Parry work together. The mold is over three feet long. They put the mold on its edge along side the wool blanket. They line it up carefully and then working in unison they press the mold down across the wool blanket.)

Barker and Parry:  Now let me, yes, let me . . . Is it on all the way? Should I pull it? Ever so barely. A little tiny bit. Alright. Ready? Look over here right there. Okay, press, press, press . . . Will I have room?

Barker: Your principle roll is blanket woman, excuse me, blanker person. I'm a vat person. You're the blanket person.

(Ritchie narrates: The process is repeated. He stirs the water with the fiber, dips the mold and deckle assembly, lifts it up, removes the deckle and the two of them take yet another piece over to the post, or the stack.)

Parry: Furry side down, right?

Barker: Furry side down.

Barker: Would you be using this for etchings?

Parry: Use this for etchings?

Barker: Un huh?

Parry: I might. I might.

(Ritchie narrates: Just outside Barker's studio is a kind of a court yard or playground and you can hear children playing.)

Parry: What are you going to do just now? Make a few more sheets?

Barker: You tell me how many you want.

Parry: Great. Oh, that's beautiful. Will that be too many? Half a dozen?

Barker: Oh no! I mean, will that is too many - in what sense, work for me? Oh no. You have to know how many you want. Couple more, or four more, however many you want?

(Ritchie narrates: Jackie Parry also decided that she wanted to have some ordinary shaped pieces of paper - not sculpted. So the process continues with a mold and deckle that does not have the masking tape forms taped on.)

Barker: Leave this in, create some more space for that, the truth of the matter is - will it upset you if we couch in this direction? Okay? It is essential.

(They continue making sheets).

Barker: That's the story of my life.

Barker: Okay? Okay.

(Next comes the pressing stage.)

Parry: Is that a hydraulic - pump?

Barker: Yes. Yes, but don't think massive human effort isn't required. Because it is. Okay. Stand here.

Parry: So we are doing this - all up?

Barker: Sure. That's what we are using this for, right. Yeah okay, now, ready? Put your left arm here. Okay, just lift. Bearing in mind that this is a small paper.

(Ritchie narrates: They're lifting the entire contents of the day's work called the post. It must weigh a couple hundred pounds - full of water. They put it into a huge hydraulic press, hand operated, and press the post.)

Barker: You raise the lever -

Parry: This?

Barker: . . . yes . . . now down, down. Ready, up, and down. Everything is fine. Now, alright, watch, WATCH, WATCH, STOP, STOP STOP! Back it up - now you have to keep your eye on this. (pointing to the overflow trough, overflowing now with water) We don't want it to overflow.

(Ritchie narrates: The press is set up with a draining system with a little water trough and a hose that carries away the water as it squeezed out the newly-made paper sheets.

Barker: Stop, it's working, that's why I want to. You will know increasing resistance. Later you would be sitting on it. Then you would be standing on it. And I'll join you for the coup de grace.

(Ritchie narrates: The final stage is drying the paper on huge screens Barker keeps in his studio, where three sheets of paper are taken out of the post and laid out to dry.)

Barker: They come off on a diagonal.

(The sessions at Barker's thus ends. The video reopens weeks later with a view of Edinburgh, Scotland, although the scenes that follow are in Jacki Parry's studio in Glasgow.)

(Ritchie narrates: Some time later I visited Jackie Parry in her home city of Glasgow, Scotland. She showed me, in the box that she received from Spain, the results of her stay there.)

(You hear the sounds of her unwrapping and removing the packing material.)

Parry: These are the frills or ruffles is what you or Laury called them. And, oh, yeah, that's the rest of the edition of these various units and underneath that is the white-shaped addition. And the sheets of paper - some of which I left rough, and un-calendared and - some which are rough and some are which of smooth. Which I finished off by running through the press. I've got quite a lot of sheets like that to use.

And these are stencils that I made because I wanted to experiment with his washout method. So I made up the series of simple stencils just based on the structures that are in a mold and deckle, These are made out of paper and then varnished with marine varnish and laid down and then washed out with a hose. And are some of the bits- just experiments.

Since all of my work is based on landscape, and since it is frequently cold and frosty and snowy here, I thought maybe some of my ideas might translate well using this technique either three dimensionally, so that you will have veils of things, one behind the other, and, or flat and couched on to other pieces.

(End of video at Jackie's studio).

And that was the end of my video tape made in 1983 in the studio of Jackie Parry in Glasgow, Scotland. We started in the studio of Laurence Barker in Barcelona Spain. I made the recording in 1983 and finished in 1984 with the assistance of the University of Washington Instructional Media Services. I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of hand paper making - part of the Living Prints Series. My name is Bill Ritchie this tape is available from Ritchie's video, (Correction: 500 Aloha #105, Seattle, Washington 98109). I can be reached by telephone at area code 206 -285-0658.

(The End of the program).

After Words

Laurence Barker's home page is http://www.laurencebarker.com/

Transcription of this edited soundtrack was by Nellie Ritchie, Seattle. All rights are reserved by Ritchie's, Inc. The 30-minute, color videotape may be purchased from Ritchie's Video, at the same address. Send e-mail to ritchie@seanet.com for more information.

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Bill H. Ritchie, Jr. is an Itinerate Professor of Art in Seattle. He taught 19 years at the UW as a professor of art, traditional printmaking and media arts. Resigning at 43 to start his own learning, research and production company, he created Emeralda in 1992, a game strategy he likens to a fantasy region accessible only by computer. He invented rules-of-play and an operating system he wants to be an online interactive game. He’s immersed himself in a virtual promised land in the age of digital reproduction. For further information via e-mail: Ritchie@seanet.com, and see the professional Web site at www.seanet.com/~ritchie. The company’s name is Emeralda Works, 500 Aloha #105, Seattle, WA 98109. Telephone (206) 285-0658. This article’s statistics are: 461 Words. 2307 Characters. 1 Page. ipp31229 Collect All Forty Stamps. ©2003 Bill H Ritchie, Jr.