Loughborough's dedicated papermaking studio is situated within Fine Art Printmaking. Although it is used primarily by students of the undergraduate Printmaking program, students from all over the School come to carry out a range of special projects involving handmade paper. These have included paper-clay, used in ceramics; Japanese paper, for casting sculptures; and multi-colored pulp painting, in textiles. In 1970 Dave Gibbs first introduced hand papermaking to Loughborough, located in England’s Midlands, between Nottingham and Leicester. His first project was very basic: he gathered nettles from local community gardens, boiled them in caustic soda, and poured the pulp onto silk screens, where he left the paper to dry naturally. From these humble beginnings “the swamp,” as the studio is affectionately known, steadily grew in size and sophistication to its current advanced state. It now has a wide range of student-grade moulds, handmade from mahogany with coarse silkscreen mesh covers. The largest is a real whopper, measuring six feet by five feet. Along with a variety of vats, the swamp has a one kilogram Hollander beater and a thirty ton press, both from Lee Scott McDonald, and a large paper dryer. Gibbs puts the LUSAD program in context: While handmade paper and book arts are thriving in university departments all over the United States, in Britain there is scarcely any institutional support for papermaking and even less for research into its Fine Art applications. The exceptions to this rule survive more by the tenacity and the efforts of their protagonists than from the cash benefits they get. In Glasgow, the indomitable Jaqui Parry continues to divide her time between running a successful printmaking department and making paper in her own studio at home. …[S]tudents at Loughborough have been incorporating handmade paper into their artworks for twenty years and more, working for much of the time in a corner of the print studio with little more to keep them going than a few home-made screens, an old cast iron mangle, and their enthusiasm. I have been working at LUSAD as a practicing printmaker and papermaker and a part-time lecturer for the past four years. During that time Gibbs and I have spent many hours developing the papermaking studio to its current standard. In the last year, I have made a range of papers for our archives using more than forty types of fiber. More recently I have also begun making books. This year I taught a successful bookmaking project with LUSAD’s second year undergraduates. Dierdre Kelly, director of the Hardware Gallery in London (a prominent gallery specializing in artists’ books), came to talk to the class. She brought a suitcase full of wonderful books from all over the world. These enthralled the students and inspired them to design and make their own books. Some of them used their handmade paper with inkjet images, screen prints, and etchings. The use of text was optional; I asked only that each book have a basic theme and that there be a relationship between the pages. The results of their labors were outstanding.