The Art of Making Paper With Stephanie Hare

Artist Stephanie Hare fills her Ellsworth, Maine, SHare Studios with perfectly imperfect handmade paper that draws customers in search of colorful, textured stationery, wedding invites and even canvas squares with embedded feathers. But her origin story didn’t start with a beginner’s guide to paper making — it started with light. “My introduction to handmade paper was working at a little gallery in Brooklyn, Maine,” she says. “I was a gallery manager and learned how to make custom lampshades, and that’s really where it all started for me. [It] was the beauty of handmade paper as it’s illuminated.”

What was once a lampshade-only endeavor morphed into Stephanie's experimental small-batch paper production studio focusing on a wide variety of handmade papers. "When I was making lampshades, it was mostly white and sheer," she says. "Then I [started] focusing more on doing stationery and smaller things, and playing around with color and paper."

“I feel like when most people think of paper, they think of copy paper coming out of your printer at home," Stephanie says. "Handmade paper is it’s own art form. It’s almost like a sculpture.” Her Ellsworth, Maine, studio shop is packed with stacks of handmade paper in various weights, colors and even textures — from nearly clear to card stock thick.

“A wide variety of people buy my paper,” Stephanie says. “A lot of times it’s an artist who knows exactly what they want ... and sometimes it's a wedding stationer for a bride." Some of Stephanie's favorite paper colors are blues, greens and pops of red or brown — all hues that remind her of Maine.

“It’s really fun to have a space where I can show people [paper] in person,” Stephanie says. "Even as a kid, I always wanted to have a space of my own to create." Aside from solo papermaking, she also offers educational experiences for aspiring paper artists in the studio.

Resume paper and card stock have a very different texture when felt by hand. Stephanie explains, “Each sheet is actually made on its own, so it’s called a deckled edge." The deckling process uses a mould with a screen and wooden frame that holds the wet paper pulp inside as it dries. Edges become feathery and deckled as the pulp dries and shrinks. "I think I’m really all about the texture with paper.”

One of Stephanie's most in-demand items is this tissue feather kozo — also known as Japanese mulberry paper — made with real feathers embedded into the pulp and dried. The lightweight, fabric-like texture is a bleached and natural kozo blend, with gorgeous feathers pressed inside.

"A lot of my work is online," Stephanie says. "It’s on Instagram, and I do the best I can taking dynamic images so that people can really see all the little details. But, I spend most of my time [in the back of my studio] actually making the paper."

“When I’m thinking about what I’m going to make, I’ll first choose the fiber knowing what kind of color I want to make,” Stephanie says. The final paper color is determined by the amount of pigment used in each paper pulp batch — pulp that is blended by the studio's most used tool.

A papermaker's beater is a tool used to produce paper pulp from cellulose fibers. "The main job of the beater is really to process what's called 'half stuff'," Stephanie says. "[Half stuff] is the end product of a process that takes raw fiber and partially processes it. So it’s half processed as sheet forms. Then, I take all of the half stuff sheet forms, soak it and turn it into a pulp [in the beater] and create whatever type of pulp and qualities I'm looking for. If you’re [making] a letterpress, you want a little more weight to [the paper]. So I add cotton to my abaca [pulp]. It comes in a big bale, and I separate it into smaller pieces so that I can cook it down into a caustic soda."

Rope, fishing line and elegant stationery all have one thing in common: abaca. “Unbleached abaca is probably what I use the most often when making paper,” Stephanie says. “It holds color really well.” Abaca has been used in paper making for decades and originates from the stalk of banana trees. When made into paper, it produces a creamy tan color.

In order to get those beautiful sky blues and hazy greens, Stephanie has to play fiber alchemist. "I have a lot of pigments, additives and all the different colors in my work studio," Stephanie says.

"These pigments are made specifically for handmade paper to combine with a retention agent that makes the pigments' molecules bind to the fiber," she continues. Stephanie mixes white, black, green, red and yellow to create a dusty green color for her handmade paper envelopes and cards.

"Next, I strain the pigments so there’s no blotchy spots in a fine mesh paint strainer, and then mix it into a vat filled with water," Stephanie explains. She then adds a sizing additive that helps keep ink and paint from feathering into the pulp, a process called "charging the vat."

One of the most important tools in making paper is an area that Stephanie realized needed a lot of improvement. "I have a wide variety of mould and deckles around me, but there aren’t that many mould makers out there," she explains. "Most people [make] their own tools, which is what I did."

"Deckles are essentially a bottom screen that fit on the top [of a mould], which contains the pulp," Stephanie says. "We figured out how to use epoxy in a really effective way because, as you can imagine, wood in water is not a good thing. So, the epoxy is a nice, thick coating that encapsulates all of the wood and keeps it nice and flat. And we added a little magic to it — they're actually magnetic." Stephanie sells these moulds on her website, too.

"The final step in handmade paper is to dry it, and it can be a long process," Stephanie says. "I’ve developed a few tutorials online. It’s essentially dry boxes: cardboard layered with polyester felt and a window screen. The sheets of paper [go between] the polyester felt layers." You can purchase a DIY papermaking kit that includes a mould, deckle, materials and a tutorial with Stephanie.

"Typically, I do around 10 felts between [paper] sheets," Stephanie explains. "I then put another felt on top [of the paper] and another white board on top, then it goes into the hydraulic press. The press then squeezes out all the water and mashes the fiber into a nice, tight fiber paper."

"I lay each sheet [between] the felts to soak up the water slowly and then the cardboard essentially soaks it up more," Stephanie explains. "Then, a box fan in the back is blowing through the cardboard and that’s slowly drying [the sheets] while also keeping it really flat when you keep nice weight on top. It restricts shrinkage because most paper wants to shrink when it dries."

Once dry, the newly crafted, dusty green A7 paper sheets and envelopes are stacked together and taken to the shop for customers to purchase and enjoy.

“When I first started, I actually really liked all of the imperfections,” Stephanie shares. “You want each sheet to look a little different. It has a little character.” And that's exactly what stationers, couples planning a wedding and artists around the world love about her work.