From a bench in Oltrarno, Florence: pigment, ox gall and carrageen moss on a bath of thickened water. Every sheet is lifted once, and is the only one of its kind.
See a sheet being madeOur materials. Our method.
The bath is carrageenan, boiled from Irish moss and left to rest overnight. Each pigment is ground with a drop of ox gall, which decides how far it will spread. The paper is brushed with alum so the colour holds the moment it touches. Nothing else is involved.
(02) The rule of the bath
Once the colours are down the bath never quite stops moving. There is time to comb, to lay a sheet from one corner and to lift it; after that the surface belongs to nobody. The paper takes everything that was floating. The next sheet starts from a clean bath and a different morning.
- 1lift per bath
- 6mm between comb teeth
- 0sheets alike, ever
One sheet, made — step 01 / 06
The bath
Carrageen size, made the night before, poured two fingers deep into the tray. Paper brushed with alum and dried flat. The surface is skimmed with a strip of newsprint so the first drop meets nothing.
Skip the demonstration ↓- Drops
- 000
- Passes
- 0
- Tool
- —
- Clock
- 00:00
The bath
Carrageen size, made the night before, poured two fingers deep into the tray. Paper brushed with alum and dried flat.
Stone
Colours flicked from a whisk. Every drop spreads and pushes all the earlier ones aside; the last colour is the one that stays widest.
Gel-git
A rake drawn the length of the tray and back, teeth alternating, until the drops become long parallel streaks.
Nonpareil
A fine comb, teeth six millimetres apart, drawn once across the streaks. Hundreds of tiny points in a single pass.
Chiocciola
A stylus turned in a small circle at every crossing of an invisible grid, until each stripe curls like a snail shell.
The lift
The sheet goes down from one corner and comes up after a count of ten. It takes the whole surface with it; the bath is left with a ghost.
The pattern book · 01 / 05
- English
- Stone
- Pigments
- Ochre, indigo, burnt sienna, verdigris
- Tools
- None — drops only
- Bench no.
- 0407
A sheet is made to be cut. Most of ours end up inside a cover, where only the person who opens the book will see them. That seems right to us.
Three hours at the bench: charge a bath, comb it, lift six sheets and take them home dry.