Hand Crafted with love
Farmette paper starts with natural cotton fibers, which are upcycled from the garment industry, and abaca fibers, from a plant in the banana family.
These materials are weighed and soaked, and then processed for four to five hours into pulp with a simple machine called a Hollander beater, which macerates the fibers so that they will knit together when shaken in water.
Once the beater is emptied, we use plant powders and occasionally minerals in careful ratios to dye our pulp in our natural palette. Most dyes are left for a 12-hour period to set.
Sustainably created
Next, the pulp is added to a vat of water. The papermaker skillfully pulls a screen stretched over a frame, with another frame on top - called a mould and deckle - through the pulpy water and shakes the slurry as the water drains out through the screen, leaving the shapes of the paper behind.
Excess water is sponged out, and the wet sheets of paper are transferred onto fabrics sandwiched between acrylic sheets. Stacks of these sandwiches are then moved onto a hydraulic press, where remaining water is slowly squeezed out and the fibers are further knit together to create a strong paper surface.
We Use Antique Letterpresses
These fabric-paper sandwiches are then removed from the press and hung to dry. Once they are dry, paper sheets are peeled off the fabrics by hand, and folded by hand into cards if necessary.
At this point, the paper is moved to our print room, where our press people print our designs on antique lettepresses and hot foil presses.
One By One...
Our designs, many with hand sketching or lettering that has been digitized, have been made into photopolymer plates or copper dies, which must be expertly aligned on the presses. One at a time, a piece of paper is precisely placed, and the press is activated by a foot pedal or hand lever to imprint the design into the paper.
The prints are then inspected for quality and placed with their envelopes or backers into a sleeve for safe-keeping. They’re ready to be shipped to our beloved customers all over the world!
