Project description
I make presentation albums and rigid lidded boxes to order, and for the covers and linings I need marbled paper floated by hand on a thickened bath, not a printed imitation of it. The first order is 120 finished sheets at 50 by 70 cm, plus 20 spares that I will pay for at the same rate. The stock should be 120-160 gsm, internally sized, and strong enough to go onto the water and come back off it without cockling or shedding fibre. Before the main run I want to see two or three stock options with the same pattern floated on each, because the same colours sit very differently on a soft sheet and on a hard, well sized one.
Pattern discipline matters here more than novelty. I need three families: a quiet stone or shell ground, a combed nonpareil with a fine tooth, and a feathered bouquet drawn with a stylus. Each family has to hold across at least 40 sheets, so that a run of albums reads as a set rather than as forty separate experiments. I am not asking for identical sheets and I know hand work drifts; I am asking for a palette, a comb spacing and a scale that stay inside a range we agree on from the approved sample, and for you to tell me honestly where the drift will show.
Please alum the paper before floating and tell me the strength of the mordant and how long the sheets rest after it. I have had paper from elsewhere where the colour rubbed off under a bone folder and bled the moment paste touched it, which means that step was skipped or run too weak, and every one of those sheets was waste. Pigments should be lightfast and ground for the purpose, the bath thickened with carrageenan or tragacanth, and each sheet rinsed, hung to dry and then pressed flat under boards so it arrives usable rather than curled.
What the job includes:
— three sample sheets per pattern family before the main run, sent flat;
— 120 finished sheets plus 20 spares, pressed, interleaved with clean tissue;
— packing in a rigid flat carton, or rolled only inside a stiff tube with end caps;
— a written note of stock, pigments, thickener and alum strength, so the same paper can be ordered again next season;
— about ten working days after sample approval, with drying, pressing and packing already inside the price.
Pattern discipline matters here more than novelty. I need three families: a quiet stone or shell ground, a combed nonpareil with a fine tooth, and a feathered bouquet drawn with a stylus. Each family has to hold across at least 40 sheets, so that a run of albums reads as a set rather than as forty separate experiments. I am not asking for identical sheets and I know hand work drifts; I am asking for a palette, a comb spacing and a scale that stay inside a range we agree on from the approved sample, and for you to tell me honestly where the drift will show.
Please alum the paper before floating and tell me the strength of the mordant and how long the sheets rest after it. I have had paper from elsewhere where the colour rubbed off under a bone folder and bled the moment paste touched it, which means that step was skipped or run too weak, and every one of those sheets was waste. Pigments should be lightfast and ground for the purpose, the bath thickened with carrageenan or tragacanth, and each sheet rinsed, hung to dry and then pressed flat under boards so it arrives usable rather than curled.
What the job includes:
— three sample sheets per pattern family before the main run, sent flat;
— 120 finished sheets plus 20 spares, pressed, interleaved with clean tissue;
— packing in a rigid flat carton, or rolled only inside a stiff tube with end caps;
— a written note of stock, pigments, thickener and alum strength, so the same paper can be ordered again next season;
— about ten working days after sample approval, with drying, pressing and packing already inside the price.
Other / Miscellaneous Cash, Bank transfer
