Paper Source One of the largest retail sources of handmade and hand-decorated papers anywhere, Paper Source started with one employee and now has thirty. Founder and owner Sue Lindstrom first became intrigued with paper when, as owner of a framing business, she experimented by covering mats with handmade paper. This exploration led her to attend the International Papermaking Conference held in Kyoto in 1983. The whole world of handmade papers opened up to her in Japan. At the conference she met Vera Freeman, then of the large paper importing company Andrews/Nelson/Whitehead. Lindstrom was invited by Freeman to tour Japanese papermaking villages following the conference and through this experience received an unprecedented introduction to Japanese papermakers and their craft. Lindstrom returned to Chicago with a much deeper appreciation for papermaking and a commitment to open a store focused on paper. Cady Liederbach started working at Lindstrom's suburban Chicago framing company just after graduating from the University of Iowa in 1983. Lindstrom had opened Paper Source in downtown Chicago and Liederbach was interested in this new venture. She was soon running the young business, and she continues today. Founded in the River North gallery district, Paper Source has moved three times as it has grown, but never more than a city block away. Lindstrom considers the location vitally important to the success of the store, because of the other art-related businesses in the neighborhood and also the visibility of the location. Currently occupying a pleasant, ground floor, corner storefront, the retail space for the business invites and engages customers. The front section, filled with materials made on and of paper, gives way to the heart of the store: the paper section. Open racks hold the papers; each allows a glimpse of the edge of a large sheet, but only for viewing, not touching. More than fifteen binders contain samples of all of the papers in stock. The staff has arranged the samples by region and type of paper, with each encased in a plastic sleeve open at one end so that customers may feel the papers while making their selection. A large table also occupies this area, so that staff and buyers can view full sheets. The scope of papers available seems endless. Paper Source carries sheets from almost every country where handmade papers are made. Some of these are rare and distinctive, others peculiar, others common. The business sells everything from amate to Nepalese papers, as well as many European and American handmades. Paper Source offers unusual machine-made papers among their decorative sheets, as a way for the uninitiated to become aware of the vast variety and specialness of paper. Through initial contact with these machine-made papers, customers start thinking about paper and become intrigued enough to explore and use handmades. Until recently, Paper Source sold handmade papers only in whole sheets. The urge to help unknowing consumers of paper also inspired the decision to prepare 8 1/2" x 11" packets of some of the more unusual papers. Customers have responded to this effort and like the new format. The staff at Paper Source loves rubber stamps, so they have devoted a section of the store to them. A demonstration stamping area with a bulletin board of stamped images illustrates the compatibility of rubber stamping with the handmade and other distinctive papers the store sells. Other paper products, such as stationery and bound books, as well as a small selection of books on papermaking and related arts, supplement the items at Paper Source of particular interest to papermakers. The store regularly sponsors on-site workshops in using the papers, such as basic bookbinding. These serve as yet another way for Paper Source to spread enthusiasm for handmade paper and continue the goal of educating and enlightening the general public. For sheer variety and exuberance, Paper Source benefits its neighborhood and city. Its expansion last year, when Lindstrom opened a store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, promises to spread this special excitement about paper to another community.   Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts More commonly known as CCCCBPA or just Columbia Book and Paper, this Center is less than a year old. However its origins go back more than a decade; it grew from the merging of two non-profit organizations--Paper Press and Artists Book Works. Columbia College now oversees the facility. In the early 1980s a group of women who were interested in papermaking formed Chicago Paper. These eleven artists participated in an exhibition and other projects and shared papermaking equipment, including a jointly-purchased Hollander beater which is still in use at the Center. Four of the members of Chicago Paper went on to found the two organizations which have now become CCCCBPA: Linda Sorkin-Eisenberg, Sherry Giryotas (then Sherry Healy), and Marilyn Sward founded Paper Press in 1980 in Evanston, Illinois, and Barbara Lazarus Metz, who had taught at Paper Press, founded Artists Book Works in 1983, with Robert Sennhouser. Metz, Sorkin-Eisenberg, and Sward remained active in their respective organizations up through the formation of CCCCBPA. Sward serves now as Director of the Center and Metz as Director of Summer Programs. Although Artists Book Works and Paper Press operated separately for many years, each organization with its own emphasis in the book and paper arts, their programs and interests were parallel in many ways. Both placed a heavy emphasis on education, through workshops on-site and in the community, at schools, and at colleges; both had spaces for regular exhibits of contemporary work in their field; both provided facilities for papermaking and book crafting which were available to members and visitors. The merging of these two institutions, therefore, became more a broadening of scope for kindred approaches than a compromise of two different philosophies. In the early 1990s, several Chicago-area graphic artists and book binders decided they wanted to see the establishment of a comprehensive book arts center in Chicago, similar to the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, in Minneapolis. Paper Press and Artists Book Works soon joined in the planning. When the two organizations decided to merge, they worked with Suzanne Cohan-Lange, director of the graduate Interdisciplinary Art Department at Columbia College. They found a site for the Center and, through a collaboration of interests and efforts, reached an arrangement late in 1993. Cohan-Lange's department now administers the Center. Metz described the transformation succinctly: "We've been institutionalized!" The building's owner renovated the space and the Center celebrated its grand opening in the spring of 1994. The Center has an active exhibition schedule, as did its predecessor organizations. A joint exhibition by artists Bill Drendel and Richard Hungerford coincided with the facility's opening, and the staff has booked the gallery space through 1995. The schedule includes an exhibit of dimensional paper works by artists who will be teaching at the Center in the spring--including Therese Zemlin and Amanda Degener--and a book show to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Caxton Club, a Chicago group interested in fine printing. As with Paper Press and Artists Book Works, workshops constitute the primary activity at the Center. A full schedule of offerings, many of them on weekends and in the evening, cover various aspects of the paper and book arts. Staff or local artists teach most of the workshops, but visiting artists from outside the region conduct special programs. The Center also works on-site with children's groups, on a continuous basis. School Books, a program designed for children in the Chicago City Schools, brings students to the Center to experience the history of paper and books, the process of making creative papers by hand, printing and binding processes, and the arts of the book. The new Center fills a vast space leased by Columbia College, twelve thousand square feet in total, a marked improvement over its founding institutions, especially Artists Book Works. This much space allows for separate areas for offices, the gallery, wet and dry papermaking, letterpress, binding, and individual work studios. In addition, the staff reserves three thousand square feet for rental spaces for artists, who have access to equipment and facilities in the Center. The facility appears somewhat empty, but this leaves plenty of room for expansion as the Center acquires more equipment and materials, and rents more artist spaces. Located just inside Chicago's downtown Loop, patrons can reach the Center via public transportation from the entire metropolitan area and by foot from local offices and schools. Students can walk from Columbia College, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Roosevelt University, and De Paul University. Indeed, students from Columbia and the Art Institute attend formal papermaking classes here, as they did previously at Paper Press. The Center can provide a focus for papermaking and related arts in Chicago, through its educational efforts. In bringing together book and paper artists in a downtown location, it holds the promise of energizing Chicago and the surrounding region.   Aiko's Art Materials Import Aiko Nakane grew up in Seattle, but attended high school in Japan. While there she was exposed, like all Japanese children, to that country's traditional crafts, such as calligraphy, flower arranging, and folk dance. Growing up, she thought nothing of handmade paper as it was such a utilitarian material. She remembers, for example, her mother using a rolled piece of paper to tie her daughter's hair back when she could not find a ribbon or hair-band. Nakane opened Aiko's Art Materials Import (usually known simply as Aiko's) in the mid-1950s. She had traveled to Japan and brought back Japanese papers, brushes, and art supplies for a friend. The way she presented these items made them look like an assembled set and acquaintances of her friend asked whether she could purchase such a set for them. On her next trip, she bought materials in larger numbers and this formed the initial stock for her store. Nakane, now in her eighties, used to go to Japan every year to seek out new papers. She had to establish contacts with exporters, because the papermakers, who lived mostly in rural areas, were not equipped to handle customs and mailing to the United States. Businessmen in Japan were initially very skeptical of her ability to run a business, because she was female; she had to be careful not to be cheated. Early on, Nakane realized that she would need to offer papers and supplies via mail order in order for her business to survive. This now accounts for the bulk of the store's sales, with customers worldwide. To show people the available papers, she produced sample books, the creation of which have been a challenge ever since. She points to printing on the different surfaces of the papers, cutting them precisely, and binding them together as some of the problems, but these challenges seem to have been overcome, at least in the latest sample book. This sample book is divided into sections by type of paper, with suggested uses for each type. It holds examples of more than a hundred papers, identified by number, name, and sheet size. Because of limited volume, certain special papers are available only in the store and do not appear in the sample book. The walk-in customers at Aiko's include many instructors from local institutions and their students. Over the years the types of artists who have purchased papers from Aiko's have shifted. First painters, then block printers, then designers were drawn to use the Japanese papers. Papermakers followed, with the revival of that craft in the 1970s. In the last five years, bookbinders and those using Japanese papers for conservation purposes and restoration have been the largest customers. In addition, the store has always drawn customers who work in collage, printmaking, and mixed media. Aiko's was in downtown Chicago for almost thirty years, then moved to its current location in Lakeview, near Wrigley Field, in the late 1980s. The new site has about three times the space of the former location. Chuck Izui now runs the store, although he views his role really as part of an on-going collaboration with Nakane. He started working at Aiko's when in college fifteen years ago and has been there since. The store is spare and clean, with shoji screens providing visual breaks in the long space. Japanese pottery fills the front window and shares a small gallery space with contemporary Japanese prints, in the back of the store. Artists' books, many of them bound with or incorporating handmade Japanese papers, recently filled a second, temporary gallery space. The store also sells a selection of books on Japanese papermaking and book arts, along with brushes and other Japanese art materials. Nakane and Izui have arrayed the papers on a wall, rolled neatly and stored in cubby holes, each opening covered with a small sample of the paper inside. Large tabletops for unrolling the sheets stand conveniently nearby. Japanese handmades, both plain and decorated, make up over ninety-five percent of the papers here. The variety is staggering, with subtle differences in color, texture, and design revealing a wealth of possibilities. Aiko's carries a few Western decorated papers now, to appeal to bookbinders. The range of papers made in Japan has diminished over time. When Nakane first started importing, Japanese papermakers would cultivate their kozo themselves, sometimes nurturing specific branches to be used for a particular batch of paper. As the older generation has passed on, this kind of specialization has disappeared. Papermakers increasingly use different qualities of mulberry, from Taiwan and Thailand in particular, and in some papers they mix wood pulp with the traditional fibers. Nakane says she can sometimes tell a paper's kozo content when she lifts a newly delivered package. The pure kozo papers are most special to her. Both she and Izui find the experience of unwrapping a new shipment of fine Japanese paper unmatched, as they note its smell, its sheen, and its feel. Izui identifies some of the more unique papers as his particular favorites: Kurotani Hatome, a thick kozo, irregularly dyed with persimmon juice; Tosa Gasen Aizome, true indigo-dyed kozo; and Sugikawa, a rough, thick kozo with Japanese cedar. Some of these are so specialized that they sell very infrequently; they can probably be found nowhere else, however, and this underscores the importance of their availability at Aiko's. Nakane and Izui do not know what the future holds for Japanese papermaking, although they note with hope the relatively recent formation of an organization of young papermakers in Japan. While the variety and scope of traditional Japanese papers is shrinking, the art continues. In providing an unparalleled variety of Japanese handmade papers, selected with the discriminating eye of more than thirty-five years' experience, Aiko's is a national treasure. For Chicago, the Midwest, and the whole country, Aiko's, like CCCCBPA and Paper Source in their own way, serves a special role. <