PETER & DONNA THOMAS
spacing 260 Fifteenth Avenue Santa Cruz CA 95062 (831) 515-2757

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A listing of Peter's personal collection of books on the subject of papermaking now held at the University of Iowa. Click here.

Link to view a video showing tools and equipment in our studio. Click here

How to Make Paper Without Getting a Sore Back (2000) by Peter Thomas. 20 minute video. This is now free. I have put it on YouTube. Click here

 

If you would like to buy a digital transcript of the information on the video and an additional 18 page PDF describing what I have learned over the 40 years I have been making handmade paper for letterpress printing you can click the "buy it now" button.

The PDF gives information on fiber choice and additives like pigment and sizing, it describes how to load and run a hollander beater including information on beating theory. It also discusses the mechanics of the other operations like couching and pressing.

 

 

Paper Samples/Our lives with paper: an autobiography told through handmade paper samples 2022. A perfect bound, digitally printed, book with text and color photographs. 5 examples of the handmade paper samples are tipped in at the end of the book. 11 x 8.5 inches. 105 pages. $75.00

See more images and information.

THEY MADE THE PAPER AT TUCKENHAY MILL. Thomas, Peter and Donna. Ann Arbor, MI: The Legacy Press, 2016. 4to. stiff paper wrappers 120 pages Price: $20.00. Available from Oak Knoll Books

A self-taught hand papermaker, Peter Thomas became interested in knowing how apprentice-trained hand papermakers working in production hand papermills made paper. He especially wanted to learn the "vatman's shake," the series of motions that papermakers used to form their sheets of paper. This desire circuitously led him and Donna to Tuckenhay, near Totnes, Devon, in England, where beginning in 1988, they recorded several hand papermakers, returning to make others in 1990 and 1994. The book begins with a short history of Tuckenhay Mill and the story about meeting the papermakers and recording their interviews. This is followed by eight interviews of men and women, all who worked in the Mill from between the World Wars until it closed in 1970. All of the papermakers are now deceased, but the stories - in their own words - remain an extraordinary, entertaining, and timeless record of their lives and work.

How to Make Paper Without Getting a Sore Back (2000) by Peter Thomas. This 20 minute DVD gives suggestions for how to set up a studio and make paper in ways that will help avoid back problems and repetitive motion injuries. Suggested warm-up exercises are described. The DVD includes footage filmed in traditional western paper mills in England and Sweden that illustrate the traditional techniques used to form and couch paper. Most papermakers who see this say, "if I had only seen this before I hurt my back...."

Want to go old school?

DVD with pamphlet in handmade paper portfolio folder (as pictured). $195.00


   

 

 


© 2002 Peter and Donna Thomas