Mark+Fold for Community Clothing | Paper-making in Cumbria
In October 2024 we launched our Mark+Fold for Community Clothing stationery range. Denim offcuts are collected in the cutting room of their jeans factory in Lancashire, before travelling to Paper Foundation in Cumbria where they are transformed into sheets of beautiful hand-made paper for the notebook and diary covers.
Read on to see a step-by-step of the paper-making process.
All images: Ella Thomson Photography.
This paper is rare because it uses 100% denim, whereas most recycled paper uses only a portion of recycled material mixed with higher quality fibres for strength. But thanks to the high quality of the denim fabric, we can make a great quality paper with denim alone. No additional dyes or bleach are added, making this a very clean process — all of the colour in the paper comes from the denim itself, hence the colours (black, indigo and blue) match those available in the Community Clothing range of jeans and denim jackets.
Step 1: Offcuts are collected and colour-sorted at the Community Clothing jeans factory in Lancashire. They travel a few hundred miles by road to Cumbria, where they are shredded for paper-making.
Step 2: The shredded denim offcuts are turned into paper pulp, with the addition of water and 8 hours of working in the 'beater'. The dyes already present in the denim lend a beautiful blue colour to the paper pulp, with no additional colours added, nor bleach.
Step 3: The pulp is scooped out onto a flat sieve, allowing the water to drip through, leaving a matted fibre on the surface of the mould. This is then turned out onto woollen felts in a process called 'couching.' The felt gives texture to the finished sheets of paper.
Step 4: The sheets of paper are stacked in a pile called a 'post' before being placed in a press to remove the remaining moisture. This 40-tonne press is similar to those used in traditional book-binding.
Learn about the next stage: Printing & binding in Suffolk
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