Making Paper at the Botanics

Course: Papermaking with Plants Tutor : Jonathan Korejko

Public gardens exist to inspire people on many levels. Designers, horticulturalists, scientists, botanists and artists can play a part in enhancing a visitors experience to the garden. Hopefully, people go home with a heightened sense of awareness and a greater appreciation of plants. Papermaking, in this setting, is a natural extension of what a good garden can offer. Making paper with plants opens up all sorts of doors through which we can travel to learn more about the diversity of a collection like the one which grows at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland. The programme Papermaking with Plants, took place at the Botanics on 20th and 21st October 2012, and involved 8 adults. Before the course began, I sent a wish list of plants to the horticultural team . They provided me with a variety of specimens which could be exploited in a number of ways. I also contributed plant material from my own garden. Together we provided the students with coloured petals, shaped leaves, scented flowers, fluffy seed heads, and fibrous stalks. We also received support from a Scottish horticultural supply company who donated a load of brilliantly coloured jute string. (Jute is a plant from which we get common garden twine. Normally it is brown or green. The twines we received made an excellent addition to our palette. ) We worked in the Fletcher Building and made A4 and A5 sheets of paper which incorporated many different plants from the garden. The photographs and illustrations on the following pages demonstrate the diversity of the materials we used, and capture the spirit of the weekend: we explored, developed, experimented and shared ideas to create colourful, intriguing and unique papers.

J.Korejko 2012

T: 01526 378222

E: jj.ck@zen.co.uk

W: www.timberlandand.co.uk

page 1 of 8

The People

Embedding Acer leaves in paper.

J.Korejko 2012

T: 01526 378222

E: jj.ck@zen.co.uk

W: www.timberlandand.co.uk

page 2 of 8

Embossing : Inula speciosa

J.Korejko 2012

T: 01526 378222

E: jj.ck@zen.co.uk

W: www.timberlandand.co.uk

page 3 of 8

Preparing colourful jute (Corchorus capsularis) twine

The Plants

Phormium tenax

Scraping fibres out of the Phormium leaf

J.Korejko 2012

T: 01526 378222

E: jj.ck@zen.co.uk

W: www.timberlandand.co.uk

page 4 of 8

Rudbeckia Goldsturm

Agastache Blue Indigo

Cirsium arvense

Salvia fulgens

Fuchsia Mrs Popple

J.Korejko 2012 T: 01526 378222 E: jj.ck@zen.co.uk W: www.timberlandand.co.uk page 5 of 8

The Paper

Parthenocissus (virginia creeper)

Viola cornuta Broughton Blue

Salvia fulgens

Agastache Blue Indigo

Rudbeckia Goldsturm

Clematis tangutica

J.Korejko 2012

T: 01526 378222

E: jj.ck@zen.co.uk

W: www.timberlandand.co.uk

page 6 of 8

The Jute Collection The jute plant (Corchorus capsularis) does not grow at the Botanics. So, the fibres in these lovely papers came from Forfar, near Dundee, where beautiful coloured twine is made.

J.Korejko 2012

T: 01526 378222

E: jj.ck@zen.co.uk

W: www.timberlandand.co.uk

page 7 of 8

There is an information board at the Eastgate entrance to the Botanics , welcoming visitors and stating: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Exploring and explaining the world of plants for a better future. This ideal inspired me as a teacher and motivated me to reach out to my students. Gardening and papermaking are partners, and help people to discover that inside every blade of grass, or flower blossom, or stem of a plant, there is a piece of paper trying to get out. I have made paper in many venues around the UK, and taught papermaking to thousands of children and adults. By exploring plants in this way, the paper we made during the two-day course became a physical and tactile reminder of the procedures and techniques involved in the papermaking process. The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh was an excellent place to explore papermaking, because it gave me and the students access to the plant collection in the garden. The participants in this programme went home with plant papers , but they also took a piece of the botanic garden with them, along with the memory of the weekend on which the papers were made.

Special thanks to the horticultural team for supplying the plant material. Thanks to Anne, Sam and Ginger as well for providing some of the photos for this report . Support from Nutscene for the coloured jute is gratefully acknowledged. J.Korejko 2012 T: 01526 378222 E: jj.ck@zen.co.uk W: www.timberlandand.co.uk page 8 of 8