Elspeth Pope: You and Suzanne are both from Seattle. How did you get to the University of Wisconsin in Madison? Neal Bonham: We were both interested in the arts and we were attracted by Wisconsin's programs. Suzanne was working in literature and visual arts; I had been looking for courses in ceramics, metalworking, and glassblowing. We heard of a typography course in which students made books, and Suzanne signed up for that course. Pope: How did Suzanne end up in Walter Hamady's program? Bonham: She found out that there was another type shop, Hamady's, that made paper and had a much more comprehensive approach to typography. It wasn't just a way to put words on a page but a way to integrate the word, the paper, and the type to make conscious choices. Suzanne found that very interesting. I didn't take the course but I worked with Suzanne. We knew nothing about letterpress printing or books as art forms until then. Up to that time we really hadn't valued paper but now we were making it ourselves and controlling the process. It was such a friendly process, and non-toxic. It became so interesting that we pursued it to the exclusion of everything else. Pope: When and why did you move back to Seattle? Bonham: We moved back to Seattle in 1976 because our families were here. It was a welcoming place and the climate is friendly. Sandra Kroupa, of the University of Washington, was very supportive. At that time she already had a good range of private press work represented in the library's special collections. By 1977 we had purchased a Vandercook proof press, some type fonts, and a Hollander beater, and set up in a storefront with two other artists. Pope: How did you settle on the name Sea Pen Press and Paper Mill? Bonham: One of the requirements for working with Hamady was that each aspiring printer had to name his or her own press. So we came up with Sea Pen. I thought it was an interesting animal and it has a word relationship to both Seattle and to writing. The sea pen looks like a big plume about a foot high, bright orange and very feathery. It sticks up out of the sandy bottom of Puget Sound, just below the low tides. It is so elaborate, it is almost too complex to draw, so we never turned it into a logo or watermark. I like that. We avoided having to put stupid logos on paper that might be embarrassing twenty years later. Pope: Let's talk about papermaking. Bonham: Many of the twentieth century revivers of papermaking came to it through an interest in the book arts. Dard Hunter comes to mind, of course, but others perhaps more directly inspired the current practitioners, notably Douglass Morse Howell, John Mason, Henry Morris, Laurence Barker, and Walter Hamady. These were some of the people who demystified paper and reconfigured its production to fit an artist's studio. The earlier extinction of handmade paper in America has led to some non-traditional practices among current papermakers as we try to clone a new industry from the spoor and bones of the old one. Virtually no one working today in America has had any training from a real master papermaker. While we don't have the knowledge of the previous generations, neither have we their constraints. We are free to explore new tools, new materials, and new techniques. We must remember, however, not to take ourselves too seriously. As St. Bernard said, "He who makes himself his own teacher, makes himself pupil to a fool." Pope: What is your definition of paper? Bonham: When I think of paper I think not so much about the material it is made of as the essence of the product. You pick it up and it is relatively thin in one dimension compared to its other two dimensions. It folds together, it rattles, and is reasonably smooth and flexible. If you take a big wad of pulp and let it dry out, it is the same material, but I have trouble calling that paper. Some people have defined paper as being necessarily a vegetable fiber, saying you can't make paper of wool or glass fiber or synthetic fibers. I don't agree with that. I don't care what the stuff is made of. That all works toward defining what I do with forming and watermarking paper. It has to result in a product that still has this sense of paper about it, this flexibility and integrity. Pope: This could be considered a fairly conservative definition. Bonham: I started out early with basically conservative attitudes. Pope: Your pursuit of quality in papermaking parallels Glen Wark's doesn't it? Bonham: Somewhat. We bought his equipment when he abandoned papermaking in 1982 or 1983. That was before I began expanding my research on decorative papers, and was related to supplying papers to conservators, who represent a specialized group of paper users. Conservators want a broad selection of very good quality paper which looks like the old paper. There is a lot of interest in getting more hand papermakers to produce these papers. Pope: Watermarks are a major current interest for you, aren't they? Bonham: Yes, watermarks and decorated papers. Traditionally the most commonly available decoration for paper was a watermark. "Decorated" paper usually means marbled or paste papers, but I use the term to mean decoration made with the paper. I want to see what I can do with a piece of paper while it is wet on the mould without multiple couching and without direct manipulation. When I tried to blow glass I found it so frustrating because I wanted to grab the stuff with my hands. You cannot do that. Everything is done by remote control, by gravity, getting the glass just hot enough so it will flow just the right amount. Now I am treating the wet paper in the same way. I don't want to grab the fibers and pull them around; I want to create a situation where the pulp flows into the areas and configurations I want, but on its own. I get the fibers into a relaxed state, oriented in two dimensions mostly. To me that gives a piece of paper the most strength, the best light transmitting character, and the most integrity. Those are the limitations I have set to work in. I break away from what many other people do in decorative papers. Some paint with pulp or do pulp washes, pouring pulp either onto a mould or couching onto a piece of paper already made. I haven't felt comfortable with that. Pope: Is the creative process there for you in every edition of papers? Bonham: Yes, by color and by a proper format. One way I can incorporate some of my art right from the conception of every book edition is to put in watermarks. They can be simple wire designs, like traditional watermarks, or more elaborate shadow marks and multiple layers of pulp. I wish I had a word for a multi-colored, multi-layered technique that doesn't involve direct manipulation, something more akin to printmaking than to painting. The decorative techniques I am trying to do are really based on the kind of production motions normally used in making paper. The pulp is still dipped out of the vat, still flows across the mould, the water sinks through the mould, and that process can be repeated time after time. You can get very similar results from one sheet to the next. Pope: Can you tie that in with the concept of the watermark as an identifying feature of a number of sheets? Bonham: It is a little different. Generally those kinds of watermarks have been trade marks or identifiers but haven't really been part of the artistic product itself. Not very many watermarks by themselves would be considered book illustration, although there were some very elaborate pieces done for commemorative reasons. What I'm trying to do is more like illustration. I have always used watermarking as illustration, as a support mechanism for Suzanne's typography. Wire watermarks are hard to use as illustrations, though. I can't imagine a more difficult way to do a drawing; building an image up out of little pieces of wire and attaching them to a mould is incredibly laborious. Embossing a piece of screen to do a shadow mark is actually a lot faster, although it's harder to control in some ways. You have to be a very good sculptor and be able to make bas relief models that are really accurate. For more abstract work, however, it is a pretty simple process. Still, I wanted a more spontaneous medium. One day I was listening to an opera on the CD player, downstairs in the studio. I opened up the CD box and there was a little square of foam inside. I thought that looked just like what I had been looking for. I laid it on a mould and dipped a sheet of paper and it made a perfect little square shadow mark. So I started playing with foam, which was readily available and very cheap compared to screening for embossed watermarks. The water drains through it perfectly evenly; it makes beautiful sheets of paper. I have been using that a lot now, not just for watermarks but also as a mould surface. Pope: With the cut out foam you can get a shadow watermark? Bonham: Yes, it does the same thing as an embossed screen. Pope: But you use foam as a whole mould surface too? Bonham: Yes, you can make ultra cheap moulds with it. Pope: Can you tell the difference between a sheet of paper made from a mould with a wire or a foam surface? Bonham: I think if you looked very closely you could, depending on the paper. Foam usually has a few spots where some of the bubbles are bigger and that makes extra thick spots in the paper, but in general you can't tell. There is much more experimentation I haven't tried, like cutting the foam thinner so I can do more layers. The foam I can get easily is 1/8" thick and when I get a couple of layers of that built up, it is really too thick to make a good watermark. I end up with very thin paper over the high spots and then much too thick paper in other areas. Pope: I've seen thinner sheets in packing, about 1/16." Bonham: That would be ideal. I have had it custom cut 1/16" thick and that is great. Commercial outfits are able to make all kinds of shapes out of foam, three-dimensional shapes. That has great potential. It would be nice to assemble relief models and maybe press a piece of foam over them and slice it, and then have the foam retain a three-dimensional representation of the original model. That would allow making more spontaneous watermarks. Pope: Do you see your work as growing out of Japanese decorative papers and are you pushing the boundaries, testing an art form for new limits? Bonham: I'm not trying just to imitate Japanese papers although I am using several of their methods as a starting place. As far as pushing the limits, I hope so. I am trying to get as crazy an idea as I can into a piece of paper. I can't really duplicate the Japanese techniques with cotton but I'm still fascinated by the idea that using just cotton and the beater I can get such variations in the character of the sheets. Most of the pulps I use are cotton, just beaten differently. I try to avoid the use of chemicals, my fascination being with the beater, the water, and the cotton. The beater is the magic device that I use to control the behavior of the pulp, to get the right hardness for printing, the folding endurance, and the tear resistance, all qualities one might want to accentuate in a piece of paper. There are other ways to affect those characteristics in paper: using different fibers or certain chemical additives, or varying the amount of pressing and the drying method. But the beater is essential. By changing how hard I put the roll down on the bed plate and how much fiber I put in, I can change the proportions of fiber cutting to fiber crushing and fiber abrading, the three things the beater does. By changing those proportions I also change the characteristics of the paper. Pope: Is your interest in controlling the beating process linked to a conscious effort to reproduce the decorative effects you want? Bonham: Increased beating slows the pulp drainage and shortens the fibers; I use that to get control of the color layers. Also the shorter fibers make more distinct watermarks. Some of the most interesting effects happen by accident, like the foam in the CD box. One day, one of our cockatiels landed on a piece of wet paper on the mould, ran across it, and left a row of little footprints. I realized that I could be making little impressions in the pulp and then dipping it into another color and that color would fill in those depressions, leaving a pattern. Pope: How are you going to attract the cockatiels back to the mould? Bonham: They're kind of messy about it so I have used other things. I have used a piece of fish net pressed into the pulp, a ball chain, and other kinds of objects. My imitation of hikkakimoyogami was another fortunate accident. I was combing the knots out of a vat of pulp using an oven rack, then rinsing that off in a separate vat of water. I noticed that worm-like accretions of pulp would hang together and I realized that I could catch them on a mould, then make more paper over the top of them, and end up with a pattern. That vat technique wasn't a new idea but it was new to me. Then there is another method, tobegumo, where pulp is poured onto a mould and it makes cloud-like or oyster shell-like outlines. That also happened by accident. I was pouring water from one vat to another, straining it through a mould and I noticed that it was making rings of fiber. These accidents happen a lot, and often when you think it is a problem it can be turned around and used to your advantage. Often I play until something works out that I like. Then I have to remember what I did and go through it two or three times to figure out how it happened. I have never been able to conceive cerebrally of a final effect that I want in paper and then do it. It is always the other way around. Pope: How many scientists make discoveries cerebrally? Bonham: Exactly. More often it is the hunch that somebody works towards. I sometimes use a piece of fluorescent light grid for a mould, with a piece of foam glued on. Often there is a second layer of foam on the mould, depending on how I want to couch it. For the decorative sheets I either work on what is called the wire side of the sheet (in this case the foam side) or the felt side. Different techniques end up with the pattern on different sides. One of my techniques uses a Water Pik. First I make a base sheet by dipping a thin layer. Black is very nice as a base sheet because thickness doesn't matter very much, as long as it's opaque. When I use black pulp, it doesn't matter what I have behind it; we will only see what pattern shows up on the front side.   I can make a second little dip into the vat to clean up the base sheet a bit. A lot of people are shocked when I do that because they think you can't dip twice, but of course it is perfectly normal in oriental papermaking. For color layers I use pulp that has been beaten about three times longer than for normal sheets, which means it drains slowly. It also means that I can dip the mould in another color and wash all the excess away where I don't want it, without disturbing the base sheet. This really surprised me. I don't know why you can do that but it's very handy. With the Water Pik I then make patterns of dots in the base sheet. Alternatively, I can use a hose with a Water Pik tip on the end of it for making continuous lines, instead of making dots. The next layer of pulp fills the holes with contrasting color. Pope: Can you put color in the water pick? Bonham: No, the pulp would clog it up. Maybe if you had a lot of formation aid you could get the fiber to go through there. Pope: Could you obtain the same effect with a really fine aperture? Bonham: Yes, artists who do pulp painting put formation aid in the pulp and they can make beautiful long lines with very good control. All the fibers relax and flatten out and everything is unified. If you just pour the pulp on, the fibers are all jumbled; they're big wads and don't have any integrity. The water pick is a lot of fun. A variation involves using a potter's wheel. I put the foam mould with the base sheet on the wheel and make spirals or weird swirls with the Water Pik as the mould spins underneath it. The spraying droplets create an interesting pattern of holes. I came up with an idea that makes it a lot easier to use multiple colors. If I want to put three or four different colors in the watermarked sheet, normally I would need to have three or four different vats. When the mould is small, I can use dish pans for vats, but on a big mould I can't. I made a device which can be any size. It is made from a section of rain gutter with two handles, which I hold against the sides of the mould. By putting pulp into the gutter, I can cause a wash of pulp to flow across the surface of the mould. The rain gutter device doesn't work for the first layer, though, because it doesn't hold enough pulp. Sometimes I only need a little bit of pulp to fill dots made by the Water Pik in the base sheet. I could go in and fill them individually with a turkey baster but it is so much more satisfying to do it by letting the pulp find its own way. I've also used some cutout shapes, which I made of foam. I've tried to sculpt a little by using a soldering iron, which vaporizes the foam. Sometimes I just lay them on the mould, but they can also be glued down. If they aren't glued down they tend to fall off when couching. I typically dip several layers, at least one using thicker pulp. If I have a bunch of leaves or a more elaborate foam layer on the mould, it can be hard to couch. Sometimes I couch backwards, by laying the felt onto the mould, then flipping the mould and felt over together. It slows things down but with these sheets it might take an hour to get to the point of couching, so what is another minute? Although this method of couching is more laborious it doesn't ever distort the sheet. Often when you are couching the regular way, one edge of the sheet gets kind of squished, "crushed" it's called, and if you have a pattern you really want to preserve, it destroys it. Pope: You said you apply patterns to the other side of the sheet. Bonham: Yes. The techniques are a little different; uchigumo is done by dipping a very small amount of pulp on top of a base sheet and letting it run partway across, leaving a tide line. If a base sheet is impressed lightly by an object, a thin layer of pulp will settle into the marks, making the pattern visible. I sometimes drag a piece of ball chain, like what's on a bathtub drain, across the base sheet. This is what the cockatiels taught me by walking across the mould. Pope: So the beads in the chain make neat grooves. Bonham: Yes, and you can also use water drops, another Japanese technique, mizutamashi. Any impression is going to gather more pulp. It can be dramatic if I put down a thin layer of pulp first and then a contrasting color behind it. That's the bare bones of how I have been playing with decorative paper. I think there are nine or ten different methods I've used for putting a pattern in the paper. Pope: Do you have one that is your favorite method or one you think is more effective than the others? Bonham: Sometimes it's easy to get drawn into these complicated things but then when you see a plain white-on-white shadow mark it's just outstanding. Probably that kind of purity has the best shock value. With everything else you can see how laborious it was to do but just a plain single-color shadow mark is incredible. With all these watermarking techniques there is an interplay between the reflected light and the transmitted light. You get a positive and negative effect. As you handle a sheet of paper and the light changes from transmitted to reflected, the picture changes and it is really like nothing else. It's not like a photograph or a painting because it changes so dramatically with the changing illumination. 1� � 8             B:\NORMAL.STY HP4   @ ���       �Step-by-Step Paper Sample Description Neal Bonham I have not yet been able to define in a word what these papers are. "Decorated" usually implies paper with applied decoration; "watermarking" usually brings to mind a monochrome design in a sheet. I have tried to stretch the term with this definition: "Watermarks are the visible result of intentional variations in the thickness of paper, created during the wet stages of its formation." I hope this leaves some wiggle room for my use of the Water Pik and colored layering. Fiber and Preparation This sample is made from one fiber source, Cheney 865 (unbleached cotton muslin half-stuff). The white backing is similar to what I would use in a book paper, that is, beaten for about one and a half hours. The color layers are beaten for about four hours. The fibers in the color layers need to be short enough to make a very smooth, thin layer. I test by pouring dilute pulp over a knife edge and consider it ready when it hangs down about 1/32 of an inch. The color layers also need to be cohesive enough after forming to allow the rinsing off of subsequent layers. I test this during beating and beat more if necessary. Forming I use a foam-surfaced mould with a foam watermark glued to it. For this piece the first color is yellow. Next is a red layer. The colors will appear to blend more or less depending on the amount of transmitted light. After the first dip the colors were put on with the rain gutter device. I then sprinkled the first two dips with water to give a kind of aquatint effect and to further blend the colors. Water Pik or water jet lines were added next. These either bring the red layer forward or cut through completely, allowing the third color to show. The third color was then added, filling the Water Pik holes. Excess pulp was then washed away by dipping in plain water. If the sheet were couched at this point it would be only about two thousandths of an inch thick. For reinforcement, I add two or three dips of the white pulp. I used a second vat with just water in it for rinsing between dips throughout, so as to avoid getting garbage in the pulp. Couching The sheet is couched in the normal way. Pressing If watermarked paper is dried without pressing, the imprint will be pronounced. I use as much pressure as I can--about 100 pounds per square inch, in this case--to minimize the third dimension. Drying The colored side of this paper will try to shrink more in drying than the white side because of the greater beating. To remain flat, it needs to be dried under restraint. I use a corrugated stack dryer, like the one described by Claire van Vliet in Hand Papermaking (Volume Two Number One, Summer 1987).

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