Handmade Notebook

The Gathering Hand is derived from GRAS’s five decades of passionate, hands-on creation—historically in the fields of conservation, architecture and interiors—and from the practice’s interest in interdisciplinary design. Through The Gathering Hand, GRAS celebrates the innate human drive to make. Handmade notebooks, composed in collaboration with Paper Foundation, Burneside, to honour the patience and permanence of the papermaking craft. Paper Foundation is an arts and heritage organisation, based in the lake district, specialising in the traditional production of fine handmade papers. Working closely with paper-maker Tom Frith-Powell, The Gathering Hand composed a quiet palette of natural papers, bound together into simple notebooks that strive to express the traditional craft. The mill patiently oversees a material metamorphosis from rag and cloth into hand-formed sheets of paper. Natural cloth and rags of linen, hemp, cotton and abaca fibres are a local source of material for the paper-maker. Following this initial gathering, the rags undergo a series of shredding – first by hand and then by traditional hollander beater. The fibres are slowly broken down into a fine pulp that is suspended in water to form a semi-homogenous mixture. The milky liquid pulp is agitated and scooped up with porous moulds that allow it to settle in thin, fragile planes. Once pressed and dried, these planes mature into strong sheets of beautiful paper. The notebook’s cover stock presents a very simple traditional paper type: linen rag formed in the James Whatman method. The fine mesh of a Whatman “woven-mould” creates a more continuous, unbroken surface. Produced in a strong, 400gsm weight, this fresh paper is then pressed and dried between handwoven felts that wick away excess water and, in-turn, impart their mottled texture on to the fresh linen rag paper. When seen under raking light, the cover quietly tells its story. Turning past the cover, the notebook’s inner-body is bookended by fine laid-paper, produced from a blend of abaca, cotton and hemp fibres. This fine paper compliments the linen rag stock softly and presents a paper-making-method that pre-dates the Whatman moulds. Laid paper is formed on a more sparse mould type, the “laid-mould”, that imprints its grid of wires onto the paper. Lifting the paper reveals this fine lattice of grid lines and, on occasion, the inclusion of watermarkings. The infinity mark, denoting papers of strength and longevity, is present on a handful of these books.