Archive for September 2022

Dear Friends and Family,

Mark Cropper, head of The Paper Foundation and James Cropper Paper conglomeration, is located in a gorgeous part of England, in Kendal, near the English Lake District. Don and Mark have had some Zoom calls as they share an interest in re-creating Renaissance-style handmade paper. We were invited to visit their facilities, which we were excited to see. It turned out to be beyond our expectations.

Below are some of the greenhouses as you approach the handmade papermaking facility.

Speaking with one of the grounds keepers and with some of the staff.

The handmade papermaking facility is lovely, compact and stocked with many vintage paper moulds. These are only a few of them. As you can imagine, Don was drooling over these.

A collection of paddles for stirring the vats of paper pulp.

Don trying his hand at the vat.

Even their compost heaps are lovely.

The old family home, which Mark is currently restoring, now houses The Paper Institute. The Cropper family have been in the papermaking line for many generations. Mark once mentioned 10 generations in the paper business.

Inside, more antique paper moulds.

And some stages in the production of a watermark of a young queen.

The back side of the old family house.

Era; Sam, an intern; Tom, the main handmade papermaker; Don and Tilly, the grant writer.

Later, at Mark’s father’s (James Cropper) farm/estate. It really looks like something from a Jane Austen novel.

Don, Mark and James viewing a giant Hollander beater near the barn.

A beautiful evening. We all went out to dinner at a wonderful pub with delicious food, but we somehow neglected to take any photos.

The next day Mark took us to his production commercial paper mill and gave us a tour. I took this rather horrible photo which doesn’t begin to capture the place or the village attached to it.

car

The James Cropper company has partnered with Hallmark to strip the plastic coating from paper coffee cups, repulp them, and make them into a card stock which Hallmark turns into cards. As far as I know, nobody is doing that in the USA.

This is a serious paper production facility.

I probably haven’t given you a good feeling for how large this facility is, but it is huge. They do a lot of specialty papers used in rocket ships, airplanes, and carbon filters. My understanding is those specialty papers are very strong and lightweight. This has kept them alive and thriving when most hand paper mills have long gone out of business.

Paper waiting to be re-pulped and made into fresh new paper.

Love from Kendal, UK (outside of the Lake District)

Era and Don

Dear friends and family,

The day before the Queen’s funeral, Sunday, people began queuing up in droves, for miles along the planned route. There were so many crowds (We’ve heard an estimate of 2 million people) that a whole section of Central London near Parliament and Buckingham Palace was blocked off to almost all traffic. No buses or taxis were passing through, detouring across the Thames. We ended up walking to Tate Britain and back again, sometimes coming to a standstill as we encountered pedestrian traffic jams. Almost every London shop had a commemorative poster or photo of the Queen, which was quite touching.

As always, click on photos for a larger view.

An interesting quote from C.S. Lewis (and I am not a C.S. Lewis fan),

"Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters."

Of course, with royalty, it’s the luck of the draw. In general, royalty, especially British royalty, probably have an outstanding education, so that may skew them more towards sanity and a broader point of view than the average person. But that quote did make me think of the outrageous characters who are idolized in our country. I think Elizabeth II did a mostly excellent job of creating a stabilizing, civilizing influence. Undoubtedly, she was well-paid for her efforts. We’ve been watching The Crown here, which we had dropped, but it's fun to see in the UK.

We finally arrived at the Tate Britain; they had installed a mammoth procession by Hew Locke, which snaked its way through the entry hall and into some of the gallery rooms. Great fun and with lots of visual cues re politics and colonialism.

Many of the sculptures were life-size and so the audience sometimes blended in.

We hadn’t realized our friend, Faisal Abdu-Allah’s work would be up at the Tate. He said he hadn’t realized it was still on display also.

Faisal's work is displayed between the Hew Locke procession installation and the fabulous Turners that Tate Britain has.

More pageantry outside.

Getting ready for the procession.

Miles long on both sides of the river.

Our train schedule was changed — not because of strikes, which is the usual, but because of the funeral on Monday, our day of travel. We suspected this could happen and so checked at the train station.

Much love,

Era and Don

Dear friends and family,

We are on the road again. Traveling these days can be a bit nail-biting, but that’s part of the package. Don and I have scheduled a long trip; that way I figured if we do get Covid, we won’t have to be sequestered during our entire trip.

We left from San Francisco International, Hung Liu’s gate, or the gate where her piece is installed. She produced this piece at Magnolia, before we had our more or less giant flatbed press. Hung was up on scaffolding, painting at Magnolia for weeks. Seeing this work again, I was reminded of when a Chinese artist friend of Hung’s (it might have been Yu Hong) visited Magnolia. Hung insisted that we paint a stroke or two on her large piece. We both felt intimidated, but both made some tentative strokes, which Hung probably later had to paint over. (This just in: Don thinks she left them intact).

Today, I felt like Hung was wishing us a safe and enjoyable trip. She was so loved and admired by so many and her presence so strong that in ages past, and in a different culture, she probably would have been elevated into a Boddhisatva.

Click this and all photos to enlarge

The plane trip was a breeze. Our plane was delayed by an hour because of the late arrival of an earlier flight. We hung out in a lounge drinking some truly excellent wine and eating some pretty delish prawn curry, so we were fine with it. On the plane Don and I both slept. I ate some good food and left some bad.

Comfortable

I was a little concerned about landing in Heathrow as I had heard some horror stories of people waiting for three hours this past summer to clear arrivals and customs. Heathrow has completely automated things since the summer (or perhaps we did not have a typical experience), so when we got to what used to be the agents who coldly interrogated you about why you wanted to enter their great country (much like American immigration agents), there was a place to scan your passport yourself, which then triggered an automated gate that swung open and that was it! It took about two minutes. Collecting our bags took longer, but nothing very out of the ordinary.

We were wearing our masks in the airport, which was very unusual behavior. I would say only 3 percent or less of the people wore masks. Looking at the Covid reports, it seems that there were zero cases reported in London the day before we arrived. The mysterious ways of Covid.

We took the Heathrow Express into Paddington, which is our usual when in London, but a very friendly British Airways stewardess advised that next time take the tube. It is cheaper and you will be dropped closer to your location. But that way we would have missed our very accommodating cab driver in his Black London cab.

Our London digs are in Fitzrovia, near Bloomsbury and the British Museum. It’s a great location, still maintains a vestige of its one-time village origins if you use your imagination. Last night we went to a place Michael and Jill Wild strongly recommended, people with highly refined taste buds, and it was great. It’s BRAT which is “turbot" in a local London fisherman dialect.

Almost everything at Brat seems to be cooked in their wood-fired oven. Those are girolles on top of the puffy bread, mushrooms foraged in Scotland.

The revenge of the velvet crab. He’s coming for us.

Roasted duck rice. A British version of paella. Very tasty.

Feminine Power at the British Museum. What a powerful Kiki Smith sculpture of Lilith. The Feminine Power depicted in this show was all pretty supernatural — goddesses, benign and not so. I didn’t see much of the more run-of-the-mill common females. We can be powerful also. Nevertheless, a good show and interesting.

Lilith crawling down the wall.

The Goddess Inanna, who later was worshipped as Ishtar in Mesopotamia.

Yawkyawk, an Aboriginal mermaid-like being who control the weather. In the back can be seen Aphrodite. The caption said this statue was considered lewd and lascivious when it was first unveiled in Ancient Greece. It over-excited some men. I had imagined the Ancient Greeks to be a little more worldly.

We’re having almost freakishly good weather. We’re enjoying it, but ...

Don stretching his leg muscles in preparation for a long walk ahead. Looks like he is propping himself up with a Bufano.

Much love,

Era and Don

RECENT POSTS

Categories

Recent Posts

Blog Archive

Search This Blog

About the Authors

Followers