In Chicago last October I managed to sneak away from my trade fair table at the annual meeting of the Friends of Dard Hunter to take a glimpse at Peter and Donna Thomas's new book, Paper from Plants. I did not really have enough time then to look at it, so I was delighted to be asked later to write this review. Looking through the book reminded me of a visit I had made to the New York Public Library's Schlosser Collection a few years ago. I saw there the volumes of plant paper samples assembled by Jacob Christian Schäffer in the mid-1700s. Schäffer, although a clergyman by profession, was searching for alternatives to rags for making paper. He documented his work with samples of over eighty plant fibers he had gathered himself.   The Thomases have a different approach and intention. They solicited paper samples and caught the interest of Americans who work with paper for various reasons: some use plants from their garden; others make their paper as a statement (such as advocating the legalization of certain plants, like hemp, or spurring the eradication of invasive, non-native plant species, such as spartina); still others use industrial by-products like tobacco to create their handmade paper. The Thomases' intention is three-fold: to inspire non-papermakers to try their hand at the craft; to encourage papermakers to try local plants; and to tempt those who use handmade paper to incorporate paper made from native plants into their projects.    The book is beautiful. The luscious cover has a blind-stamped title on a green Moroccan leather spine and the boards are covered with decorative papers, which Donna Thomas painted in green and yellow abstract patterns. The letterpressed title plate, printed on pampas grass paper, sits inside a nicely proportioned, raised geometric design on the front cover. The end sheets and the accordion-folded gutters that comprise the binding mechanism are made from cotton pigmented a lovely shade of green. The text was letterpress printed on white cotton handmade paper in black ink using Centaur type, with Neuland type for the titles. I find Neuland a bit unusual, especially where it appears large, on the title page and cover, but it works quite well in smaller headings on the text pages. Centaur reads easily for the body of the text.   The book contains fifty folio sheets: twenty cotton text sheets handmade by Peter Thomas and thirty paper samples. The variety of plant papers sandwiched between the text sheets creates a nice cadence as you page through the book. The paper samples have been stab sewn through the accordion-folded gutter, a binding adapted especially for this book. It allows the paper samples, each made from a different fiber, to expand and contract with changes in humidity, without damaging adjacent sheets.   Each text page, which faces its corresponding sample, is exquisitely composed, with a line drawing by Donna Thomas of the plant used in the sample (printed in green ink using metal photo engravings made from the original artwork) sitting atop the text as though it were the capital on a column. The plant's common and Latin names, its family, and the name of the papermaker are neatly tucked beneath the foliage of the illustration. The papermaker's description of the plant or the process used to turn the plant into paper fills out the rest of the page and is neatly framed by a clean wide margin. I wish these texts consistently identified the plant part used to make the paper (the stalk, leaf, inner bark, etc.), a handy piece of information for those who like to experiment. In some cases the papermaker reveals this in the text, but in others it is not obvious. I would also like to know the exact fiber content of some of the sheets. A few samples looked as though their main fiber had been mixed with other, unidentified ones.   The papermakers' stories are a delightful read. Some papermakers tell of their adventures, like Mary Lyn Nutting, who got lost in the woods while harvesting her cattail fiber. Others tell about the plant's folklore: Robbin Ami Silverberg and Janine St. Germain tell us that mugwort was used to stuff pillows in the belief that it brought vivid and prophetic dreams. Often the papermakers tell us the varied uses of their plants, such as Marilyn Wold, who writes that indigenous peoples used soft-stem bulrush to make temporary floors and walls, floor mats, shoes, and utility baskets. Some learned that plants can be toxic; two papermakers told of severe allergic reactions to their plants during processing. A common underlying theme I found was each papermaker's respect for the plant they worked with. As Bridget O'Malley and Amanda Degener put it, they "will never shuck corn the same way again."   Many of the papermakers describe how they processed their fiber and produced their sheets. Susanne Martin makes gathering okra a family affair; she and her husband pull up plants which their three kids drag to the truck. Others shared what they learned. To get rid of the green color of his daphne fiber, Neal Bonham tried changing the order of processing from soak-cook-rinse to soak-rinse-cook. His results were worth the effort: the sample is silky white and translucent, with a subtle sheen.   Aside from the inherent beauty in the hues and textures of the sheets, I was pleased to discover other visual qualities. Tom Leech incorporated a watermark into his barley straw paper; Winnie Radolan included a double-couched, ginkgo leaf–shaped sheet; Silverberg and St. Germain made a beautiful patterned sheet with their two fibers; and Donna and Elaine Koretsky embedded an actual kozo leaf in their paper. While the textures of the samples vary from fine to coarse, the Koretsky's sample surprised me, in a fun, tactile way: the embedded kozo leaf feels rough and hairy when you rub the sheet on one side.   Producing this book was an incredible feat. Merely coordinating the thirty-six other papermakers, who were asked to make 150 sheets each, is no small task. Then think of the work that goes into processing plant fiber: harvesting, steaming and stripping, retting or cooking, beating, and making the sheets (the easiest part for some fibers). And that hardly compares to the hours the Thomases spent making their own two samples, preparing the text, drawing the illustrations, setting the type, making the text paper, printing, and binding the book. Talk about making something from the ground up! The only thing they did not do was kill the cow and tan the leather for the spine. At least, I don't think they did.