Handmade Path (2021)

Handmade Path (2021)
Lu Jingren, Amanda Degener, and Peng Wu
Black-inked card wrapper with magnetic closure. Handbound, handsewn, handmade paper cover book. H285 x W220 x D40 mm. 268pages. Edition of 350, of which this is #152. Acquired from Amanda Degener, 5 December 2022.
Photos: Books On Books.

Handmade Path presents 57 artists of paper and book who responded to 6 questions circulated by the editors. The editors asked the artists to provide handwritten replies to the questions as well as images of both their work and of their hands.

1. How did you begin your practice?
2. Why do you still make paper / books?
3. What is the difference for you reading on digital device or in a book?
4. In what way do you understand the 5 senses of paper / book: vision, touch, hearing, smelling, tasting?
5. Share with us some moments; eitherbreakthroughs or break downs in your work?
6. What is your next dream project?

Not all of the respondents replied in handwriting, but many sent their replies on material that reflected their work. The late Richard Flavin’s contribution arrived on gampi paper. Becky Beamer inked her reply on a gray handmade sheet. Radha Pandey’s came on indigo tinted handmade paper.

Richard Flavin

Becky Beamer

Radha Pandey

Jack Mader photographed these contributions in ways that render them visually haptic. It places that fourth question — “In what way do you understand the 5 senses of paper / book: vision, touch, hearing, smelling, tasting?” — at the core of the book. You’d swear you can feel the velvet texture of Mary Heebner’s 11 pages. Or the roughness of Helmut Becker’s colored handmade sheets or of Su Jin Kim’s white sculptural responses. The request for images of the artists’ hands naturally added to this sensory effect. There’s the glutinous wetness of pulp between the fingers of Jean Michel Letellier and Helen Hiebert and the imagined smell of the ink on George Roberts’ hands.

Mary Heebner

Helmut Becker

Kim Su Jin

Left: Jean Michel Letellier’s hands. Right: Helen Hiebert’s hands.

George Roberts’ hands.

Throughout the book are truncated pages that act almost like bookmarks. Only midway through do we learn that they bear scanned images of handmade paper from Amanda Degener and Cave Paper. Degener provides an index describing the handmade papers, which oddly appears at page 142. Not only does it function as an index, it delivers information expected in a colophon. It even describes the paper used for the book’s cover, endpapers, and the clamshell tray. But nevermind, it’s all part of diving into the artists’ process and practice.

Quite appropriately this midway index appears just after the entry for Nakagaki Nabuo, whose response to the opening question “How did you begin your practice?” comes in the form of an autobiographical handmade artist’s book. In the pages presenting his book, we see the artist, his hands at work on the book, and Mader’s precise photography of the book and its airmail envelope, followed by the bookmark-like stub with its image of Cave Paper’s Layered Indigo Day paper.

Nakagaki Nabuo and his hands at work.

Nakagaki’s My Life Journey

Verso: Nakagaki’s answer to question 6: “What is your next dream project?” Recto: “Handmade Paper Descriptions” index/colophon.

In their preface, the editors write:

Although reading is a private activity we are not alone; we are cooperating with the book, bringing it into ourselves. Reading is not only about transplanting ourselves to the beyond, but we modify ourselves to see the world differently. Our vision or purpose for Handmade Path is for you to participate in this collaboration.

Just holding Handmade Path and constantly feeling its Alphabet Dao cover, navigating its foldouts alternating Chinese with English according to the contributor, being tempted to lift a contributor’s sheet of paper from the photos, hearing the snap and creak of sewn pages turning, and absorbing the contributors’ testaments, we cannot help but be drawn into participating with the book. In doing so, we learn that, as Paulette Myers-Rich puts it, “Paper is not a substrate — it is story” (p. 197).

Further Reading & Viewing

“The First Seven Books of the Rijswijk Paper Biennial“. 10 October 2019. Books On Books Collection.

“Maureen Richardson“. 28 September 2019. Books on Books Collection.

“Fred Siegenthaler“. 10 January 2021. Books On Books Collection.

“Taller Leñateros“. 19 November 2020. Books on Books Collection.

“Susan Mills“. In progress. Books on Books Collection.

“Timothy Mosely“. 23 August 2024. Books on Books Collection.

“Peter & Donna Thomas (II)”. 12 June 2025. Books on Books Collection.

“Claire Van Vliet (II)“. 28 May 2025. Books on Books Collection.

Hamady, Walter; Samuel Haatoum; and Hermann Zapf. 1982. Papermaking by Hand : A Book of Suspicions. Perry Township, Dane County, Wisconsin, USA: Perishable Press Limited.

Hiebert, Helen. The Papermaker’s Companion: The Ultimate Guide to Making and Using Handmade Paper (North Adams, MA: Storey Publishing, 2000)

Lin Gengli. 2018. Art in Book Form. Corte Madera: Gingko Press, Inc.

Richardson, Maureen. 1999. Grow your own paper : recipes for creating unique handmade papers . N.P.: Diane Pub Co.

Thomas, Peter, and Donna Thomas. 1999. Paper from Plants. Santa Cruz, Calif: Verf. You can find images of this and others by the artists online in the Special Collections website of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries.

Weber, Therese. 2008. The language of paper: a history of 2000 years. Bangkok, Thailand: Orchid Press.