Ted Gast has created a company, Arch Paper (www.archpaper.net), to take this call to action one step further. Arch produces half stuff (partially beaten pulp that can be further processed in a Hollander beater) from recycled tee shirts and other textiles, thus providing papermakers with a "green" source for their rag. Before 1850 Western papermaking was predominantly a low-impact recycling business, taking old rag and changing it into paper. After the invention of sulfite and sulfate wood-pulping processes, most papermakers embraced the unsustainable but economically profitable model of converting trees into paper. They left in their wake clear-cut forests and rivers filled with chemical pollution. When paper was first made from rag, the process began by setting the rag to rot, or ret, in damp basements until it was partially broken down and soft enough to be pounded into a pulp by wooden trip hammers. As time passed, the trip hammer was replaced by the Hollander beater, and the retting room was replaced by a machine called a breaker. The breaker is similar to the Hollander beater, but with sharper blades. Its job is to take larger rags and chop them into smaller particles, or half stuff (so called because it is halfway to finished "stuff" or pulp). A Hollander beater is then required to process the half stuff into the grade of pulp required. Bales of used clothing, weighing 500 to 1,000 pounds, arrive by the truckload. Material comes mainly from thrift stores and charitable institutions. Unless otherwise noted, all photos by Marion Gast and courtesy of Arch Paper, St. Louis. on facing page, left: The material is placed on an 85-footlong conveyor system and sorted by hand. Garments that are not 100 percent cotton are rejected. There are 26 containers used for sorting out garments by fiber content and color. on facing page, right: Miguel Rodriguez is performing the decontaminating step by removing buttons, sequins, zippers, and other non-cellulosic materials from the remnants. breakers and so either must force their Hollander to do the job of two machines or else purchase pre-processed half stuff. This is where Arch Paper comes in. Their products, which they call Arch Shred and Arch Dry Lap, are half stuff made from 100% post-consumer rag, using no bleach, trees, chlorine, or other additives. There are other companies that make rag half stuff, like the Cheney Pulp and Paper Company out of Franklin, Ohio, but their rag source is primarily cuttings from the garment industry rather than used rag. What are the advantages of post-consumer rag? First off it keeps something from going to the landfill, but more importantly for the hand papermaker, as the research of Tim Barrett has shown, old rag is superior to new rag for papermaking. Having been washed many times, the fibers are easier and quicker to beat, and the finished paper is more stable to relative humidity changes.2 Besides being better for the environment, Arch Shred and Arch Dry Lap are actually better for the papermaker. Ted Gast was born in St. Louis in 1957. An appreciation for art runs in the family—his great-great-grandfather, an ecclesiastical sculptor, immigrated to St. Louis from Trier, Germany. When he was twenty years old Gast spent a year in Bavaria studying chemistry, German language, and linguistics. His travels during that year sparked a lifelong interest in the arts. In 1986 Gast earned a master's degree in chemistry from University of Cincinnati. Gast's only previous experience with handmade paper was in high school when he created chromatography plates from cellulose fiber for a science project. What led a chemist with such little exposure to hand papermaking to start a business selling raw materials to hand papermakers? Gast explained, I actually got started in papermaking when my friend, Kelly Stewart, asked me to help him out. Kelly owned a business named Remains. Remains received the leftovers from places like Goodwill and other resale shops. These were the items that those places couldn't sell. Remains would find a new home for them. But there was one thing that nobody wanted. Kelly was up to his elbows in textiles. I'll never forget the day Kelly asked me to stop by. The conveyor belt was running, but no one was around. A huge mass of old clothing was piling up at the end. "Hey Kelly! Where are you?" I called. I heard a series of grunts and groans, but could not find Kelly. "Are you okay?" I called. And then I saw the ever-increasing pile move, a hunk of red hair appeared, a hand stuck out. I grabbed it and pulled. "Kelly!" I shouted. "Ted what am I gonna do with all this ****ing cloth? Nobody wants to buy old clothes after they have lost their shape." "Hmmm," I said, pulling at my beard. "Okay…cotton…what can we make from cotton?" "You're the chemist. That's why I asked you to help out." "What about paper? The finest paper is made from cotton. We could make paper from your textiles." "Yeah…maybe…but that takes a lot of equipment. Equipment I don't have and can't afford." "Well…what if you shredded up the textiles? Then we could sell the shred to papermakers. And we could sort the textiles by color, for different colors of paper." So Kelly started sorting and chopping. Clunk. "What happened?" I asked. "What's wrong baby? Didn't you like that textile?" Kelly asked his shredding machine. The machine sat silent. "Maybe you need to cut them into smaller pieces? Maybe a whole textile is more than your shredder can handle?" "Ohh. I think I found the culprit." "What is it?" 30 - hand papermaking "A button. All right baby, I'll cut all the buttons off before I feed you the textiles." "Better cut out any zippers too." Kelly started sorting and shredding his cotton textiles. The next time I visited Kelly was up to his eyebrows in shredded cotton. "I need to find someone who wants cotton shred." "I just heard about a group of hand papermakers, The Friends of Dard Hunter. I'll go visit them at their meeting in Chillicothe and see if they can use it." The hand papermakers loved the shred, but they didn't need much. I probably gave away 100 pounds! 100 pounds may sound like a lot of shred, and it was. But it wasn't. Kelly had a million pounds of cotton. 100 pounds was like getting rid of a piece of lint from your wool coat. "Maybe we really do need to make paper from it," I said to Kelly. "I barely have room for myself," said Kelly. "I don't have room for machines." "Let's call paper manufacturers to see if they can make paper for us. You know see how it goes." I called and called, Kelly called and called. Finally we found a mill that would make paper for us. One thousand pounds of shred later Kelly came back with about five thousand sheets of a wonderful new machine-made paper. "What will we call it?" "Let's call it ARCH Paper. Because we're from St. Louis, the home of the world-famous Arch and also because all-cotton paper can be used for archival work."3 Ted might have taken a little literary license with that story, but the gist of it was true. His friend Kelly had bales and bales of old textiles that he did not want to send to a landfill and through trial and error they figured out what to do with it. Besides using the textiles to make machine-made Arch paper, Arch produces two kinds of pre-processed dry pulp for papermaking, Arch Shred and Arch Dry Lap. Before shredding Arch removes all buttons, rivets, zippers, and sequins. They even remove the seams because the "100% cotton" thread used for sewing seams often has a polyester core. Arch Shred comes in a fluffy, loose fiber state. It is available in seven basic colors, and other custom colors. Arch does not have control over the original dyeing, but because the textiles are old and have been washed many times, the colors are pre-faded and relatively stable. Arch Dry Lap comes in sheet form in two shades of white. It can be processed in a blender, but for high-quality pulp, it requires the use of a Hollander beater or a refiner. If you are accustomed to working with Cheney half stuff, you will find Arch Shred to be somewhat shorter and finer, beating down more quickly and resulting in a somewhat softer paper. If you are familiar with using linters, you will notice that pulp made from Arch Shred is more "greasy," and the paper will be stronger and have more rattle. Arch Paper commissioned papermaker Megan Singleton to make 1,400 sheets using all seven colors as sales samples. Singleton described her process: "I made the pulp in my 1937 Valley Beater. I began by soaking one pound of Shred overnight. The swelling from hydration of the fiber caused it to double in size. After filling the beater two thirds of the way full with water I added half the Shred, handfuls at a time, then I put on the weight and continued adding the rest of the fiber. Because the fibers are so short it breaks down quickly into a nice slurry. Since I was using it for sheet formation I beat it for one and a half hours then lifted the roll for fifteen minutes to clear the knots. I have also used Arch Shred for pulp painting and for this I beat it between four and seven hours depending on the method being used. When I use it in spray bottles for creating images with silkscreen stencils I beat the Shred for eight hours. Shred also works well for dipping wire form armatures and pulp spraying. For this pulp I beat the Shred about three hours." Singleton continued, "I use Arch Shred when I teach Intro to Papermaking. It is very convenient because it beats quickly and comes in the seven colors so I do not have to use pigments and retention aids. I have also used it with my students as base sheets for pulp painting with pigmented abaca. I have been quite pleased with the results. I sometimes think I would like the Shred to be a bit longer, so the fiber would have more integrity and strength after beating, but of course then it would take longer to beat and if I want this I can always use the Cheney half stuff. The only downside is that occasionally I have found pills because of some synthetic fiber that may have been missed in the sorting process, but overall Arch Shred works well and provides a quick beat at a decent price." Shannon Brock of Carriage House, which sells Arch Shred, has also done numerous tests with the Shred. She agreed that Arch Shred is great for the classroom with a Hollander. She noted that Shred makes a heavier, crisper paper (with a rattle) than a paper made with cotton linters, and that it makes beautiful watermarks. She cautioned that there is a possibility of color fading as the fabric dyes used to color the original materials can be fugitive. However this can be addressed by adding lightfast pigments. Cynthia Thompson, a professor in the book and paper arts department of the Memphis College of Art, recently used Arch Shred with her students to explore how black paper can be used in conceptual artist books. Thompson outlined her experience using Melinda Topilko, book in foreground is letterpress on Arch Shred black, 6 x 10 inches open. Courtesy of Cynthia Thompson and Memphis College of Art. 32 - hand papermaking Arch Shred as follows: "At MCA we typically use cotton linters, cotton rag #89 half stuff, and abaca dry lap for producing handmade paper. For this project we used black Arch Shred fiber. We beat two pounds dry weight fiber in a Reina Hollander beater for a period of three hours. The fiber had to be soaked first and added slowly, as it tended to expand in volume during the first hour of beating. We added little over one pound of fiber during the first hour. The remaining fiber was added once the first pound had beaten down. The beater roll was adjusted down to a setting of five after the fiber had been beaten for about thirty minutes. After all the fiber was added the beater roll was adjusted down to zero. At the end of the beating cycle we added sizing, then retention aid, and after that we added approximately half a teaspoon of Twinrocker black aqueousdispersed pigment diluted in one cup of water. Finally, the beater roll was raised to a setting of 35 to clear the knots. The Shred produced a very fine pulp that made a beautiful, strong sheet of paper. We found it was very easy to pull a very thin sheet of paper." My own experience with Arch Shred has basically confirmed what the other three have reported. The colored Shred beats easily and makes a nice colored sheet of paper without the pigment mess. The Arch Dry Lap is not quite as versatile as Cheney half stuff, but is much easier to beat. You can even make a nice sheet of paper with only a blender and the resulting paper is harder and has more rattle than one made from cotton linters. In conclusion I would recommend that any papermaker who has a Hollander beater and wants to experiment with an interesting new "green" paper pulp should order up some Arch Shred and give it a try. If you only have a blender, try out the Arch Dry Lap. Using these sustainable products is a practical everyday action that you can take to be part of the solution to the world's environmental challenges. ___________ notes 1. Jordan Rubin, foreword to Living Green: A Practical Guide to Simple Sustainability, by Gregory T. Horn (Topanga, CA: Freedom Press, 2006), 7. 2. For more on old-rag papermaking, please see Timothy Barrett, Early vs. Modern Handmade Papers: Observations of a 20th C. Papermaker (Madison, WI: The Silver Buckle Press, 1989.) 3. K. Gast, correspondence to the author, September 19, 2009. Taylor Wamble, pulp painting, silkscreen, and letterpress on Arch Shred black, 16 x 20 inches. Courtesy of Cynthia Thompson and Memphis College of Art. Cynthia Thompson, a developmental comprehensive study of a girdle book, letterpress on Arc Shred black, 8 x 10 inches open. Courtesy of Cynthia Thompson and Memphis College of Art.
