In Volume 33, Number 2, Hand Papermaking examines handpapermaking — the history, the craft, and art made in the medium — with a feminist lens. Today there is an unprecedented and widespread awareness of the devastating effects of patriarchal systems and structures imbedded throughout the culture. What can we learn from past, present, and future practice of hand papermaking to pulp the patriarchy?

Elizabeth Boyne makes the case that the earliest papermakers were most likely women.

Erin Zona speaks with Ann Kalmbach and Tana Kellner about founding Women’s Studio Workshop in 1974.

Melissa Hilliard Potter traces the history of the Los Angeles Woman’s Building and its impacts with two of its papermaking instructors, Sukey Hughes and Patricia Reis.

Ferris Olin interviews Judith Brodsky, along with Gail Deery and Anne McKeown, about the feminist origins of the Brodsky Center.

Alisha Adams profiles the People’s Paper Co-op’s Women in Reentry program.

Neysa Page-Lieberman introduces us to Seeds InService, an ecofeminist seed-saving and papermaking project by Melissa Hilliard Potter and Maggie Puckett in Chicago.

Feminist painter Natalie Frank describes her powerful experience with pulp painting.

Anne Osherson brings feminist context to the survey exhibition “Paper/Print.”

Two handmade paper samples round out the thematic focus of this issue:

• Kenaf paper, made at Women’s Studio Workshop;
• And Underpaper, by Margaret Mahan Sheppard and workshop participants in solidarity against sexual and domestic violence.

In addition, Jamye Jamison reviews an important exhibition of Rembrandt’s etchings that focuses on paper and a watermark identification project.