Duration

06 - 12 July 2026 / 1 weeks

Monday-Friday 10am – 4.30pm

Course leader 

Robert Rivers and Sarah Pettit (Slade Materials Research Associates)

Level - Varying levels of experience

Course Description

Paper Making, Plant to Paper

This course will introduce traditional paper making techniques and will focus on the processes involved in transforming plants like stinging nettles and straw into paper.  There will be an experimental approach to the craft of paper making. We will explore different materials that have been used historically to make paper and use plants and materials that we find around us now to create new and exciting surfaces to work with. 

 

Making your own paper offers an opportunity to sustainably create an art surface that can reflect our surroundings using readily available natural materials. The history of paper making is full of examples of people experimenting with and making use of waste materials and plants that are growing close at hand. The first papers that were made in China were said to have been made from things such as old fishing nets and scraps from the processing of hemp plants into textiles. Almost two thousand years later we can still adapt and experiment with these methods.

 

During this course we will process different plants to extract their cellulose fibres to make a paper pulp. We will make a simple mould and deckle which will be used to turn the pulp into sheets of paper. We will also explore different ways to finish our papers, with sizing and burnishing. There will be a specific focus on making paper as a surface for our individual art practices and we will consider and experiment with the different ways it can be used.

 

Please Read Slade’s Terms & Conditions: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/study/summer-school/short-courses/#general-information