WOMEN & PAPER A postcard collection recounting women’s involvement in a variety of trades & crafts in the Fabrication of Paper. Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. [colophon on inside flap: Cover Illustration, A Handy Guide to Papermaking by Kamisuki Chohoki, 1798. Primitive Papermaking by Dard Hunter, 1927 from the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Album cover printed on handmade cotton rag paper using a Chandler & Price Platen Press by Jocelyn Cohen, paper-maker & printer. Special thanks to Joan Sterrenburg from Indiana University for opening up the world of papermaking to me. Printed in 1983 at Helaine Victorian Press, Inc. Martinsville, Indiana.]
1983. Set of four postcards, 110 x 155 mm, printed letterpress on handmade paper, housed within gray handmade cotton rag paper folding wallet with deckle edges, 125 x 170mm, with printed title in red and engraved illustrations of ‘some implements for making paper’; a most attractive copy. Limited edition of fifty copies. ‘The Helaine Victoria Press was a nonprofit educational organization founded in Santa Monica, California in 1973 by Jocelyn Helaine Cohen and Nancy Victoria Taylor Poore. Their mission was to publish and distribute women's history postcards in an affordable, attractive, and popular format. Originally offset printed, the operation moved to Martinsville, Indiana in 1976 and began producing letterpress materials. In 1986, the press moved to Bloomington, IN, and since 1991 has been maintained as part of the Women's Rights National Historic Park in Seneca Falls, NY’ (Duke University).
The present scarce set serves to demonstrate ‘the long history of women’s involvement in the production of paper. In the process, she endeavoured to incorporate the way the paper looked as both design and texture to complement and enhance the subject of the card’ (Allen, Women Making History. The Revolutionary Feminist Postcard Art of Helaine Victoria Press’, p. 223.) The four postcards illustrate: ‘A line art image of an Otomoi woman in Mexico... printed in sepia on paper made from burlap feed bags with some cotton rag for strength, and the border was made from cattails that grew around the pond on the land Helaine Victoria Press occupied.... A [half-tone] photographic image of women sorting rags ca. 1900 in the US... an engraved image of women in eighteenth century France engaged in finishing work, the only other work open to Western women in paper mills besides rag picking. The paper made for this image, made from white cotton rags, [has] a gray, squeegeed border on two sides... An image of a Washi papermaker. Washi was the one kind of paper Japanese women were allowed to make’ (ibid pp. 223-6).
A further edition of 500 was printed on machine-made paper, sold in a plastic bag with a header.
Bibliography: Allen, Women Making History. The Revolutionary Feminist Postcard Art of Helaine Victoria Press’, p. 223-6.