“This bin needs more pulp” I say as I wave my hand through the milky, watery substance. I look over at Grace Gooley and she agrees, adding a scoop of fibrous material to the papermaking vat. Not a week ago, we had no idea what these words meant, but thanks to a hands-on demonstration from a local papermaker and volunteers like Grace, who learned alongside us, I now possess an embodied knowledge of the papermaking process.
One week earlier, in collaboration with the Nelson Institute, Holding History hosted our first Rags and Recycling event. Local papermaking expert Robert Possehl gave a lecture on the initial steps of papermaking, and attendees made the rags that would later provide the pulp that I now know needs adding to the water. This event marked the start of our inaugural Slow Paper series, inspired by our annual papermaking event on Library Mall.
The following week, Robert, our core team, and a wonderful group of volunteers set up our big green tent at Memorial Library Mall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. Using pulp from rags prepared the previous week and barrels of water drawn from Lake Mendota, dozens of students, faculty, staff, and Madison locals made hundreds of sheets of paper by hand.
There are many ways to make paper, but Robert specializes in Western papermaking. Although we let Robert do a few of these steps from his home studio (making the pulp, pressing/drying the paper), many other steps take place here with us and other Madisonians. Without getting too deep in the weeds, it goes something like this:
Find a fibrous material (we used recycled bed sheets purchased from a thrift store)
Make that into rags
Beat it up to activate the cellulose in the fibers and add to water to make a pulp
Filter pulp over deckle and mould
Press firmly onto a water repellent surface (we used wool and polyester)
Press and let dry
As you can see, there are two ingredients to make paper: water and plants. You might recall from your early elementary years that most paper made now comes from trees, a process that has been environmentally devastating. While going "paperless" has done a bit of work, the environmental effects of large-scale papermaking are hard to grasp. Making paper by hand using recycled materials helps put this into context.
"I think the coolest part is the fact that the water came from Lake Mendota. I had a lot of conversations with passersby about that because they're always curious where the water came from."
Grace, the Nelson Institute’s undergraduate lead ambassador and a key organizer of our Rags and Recycling event, describes the experience of making paper as a powerful way to raise awareness. As she noted, we use water from Lake Mendota, which piqued visitors' interest*. "I think the coolest part is the fact that the water came from Lake Mendota. I had a lot of conversations with passersby about that because they're always curious where the water came from," she said.
Indeed, there’s something magical about watching people roll up their sleeves and dip their hands into bins filled with lake water, mixing it with pulp from recycled bedsheets. As a Southern transplant myself, making paper on Library Mall brought me closer to the Madison community. There’s something about drawing water from "our" lake that makes it feel even more like home.
Grace beautifully captured the tactile satisfaction of papermaking, sharing, "I think just being able to actually make something and see it and be like, wow, we created so much paper; we didn't have to cut down all of these trees or take all this water from a well that could be used for drinking water. It just felt really nice to actually see it because it wasn’t only sustainable; I can see it, feel the paper, and even reuse it. It's not the end of its life either." Her reflection underscores the value of hands-on, embodied knowledge as a sustainable practice.
Every year, people ask what the pulp is made of and where the water comes from—questions I rarely (and by rarely, I mean never) consider when buying a ream of paper from the store. Papermaking offers a unique awareness, connecting us to the resources we use. This annual event allows us not only to think about these materials but to touch them, feel the rags, learn the ideal pulp-to-water ratio, press and roll the deckle, and pass the mould to the next person. We hold this history in our hands—and perhaps, in writing on this paper, we continue that history.
Papermaking 2024 was hosted in collaboration with and support from the Nelson Institute and the UW-Madison Constellations Program. We thank them for their support!
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*For a deeper dive into the history of Madison's lakes and UW-Madison's connection to them, we recommend checking out Water Lines, a blog series by Julia Buskirk created for Holding History a few years ago.
