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.