The Warrior Princess

Flora and Sylva

This week we are highlighting Paper from Plants by Santa Cruz book artists Peter and Donna Thomas, printed letterpress with Centaur and Newland type and hand bound in an edition of 150 copies. The illustrations are by Donna Thomas. There are 30 examples of paper made with plants growing in the United States. Many papermakers contributed to the book, and “it took thousands of hours to process the plants and to make the 4,350 sheets of paper necessary for the edition. It is a companion to their earlier work, A Collection of Paper Samples from Hand Papermills in the United States of America.

Peter Thomas wrote in the introduction:

“Kudzo, Cotton, and Hollyhock – any plant can be used to make paper. Walk through a field and grab at the foliage as you pass by. Some of the plants will break easily while others will cut your hand. The plants that are difficult to break can be made into paper too, but it might be that their strengths are more aesthetic than functional.

All paper is made from plants. Even the rag or linen papers of long ago were made from cloth woven with threads of spun cotton, flax, hemp or nettles. By the 1850s the consumption of paper outpaced the rate at which people wore out their clothes, and papermakers were forced to seek a new source of raw material. Experiments were made with various bast, leaf, & grass fibers, but in the end trees proved to be the most economical source for the pulp in a commercial papermill. Today we have once again reached a point in history where consumption of paper is outpacing the production of raw material. Aware of these ecological problems, many of the hand papermakers whose paper is displayed in this book are actively involved in the search for a new source of pulp. These samples which follow reveal the possibilities offered by alternative fibers.”

This book is featured in our digital exhibit on the Peter and Donna Thomas’ 40+ years of work in book arts.

View more posts from our Flora and Sylva series.

Carrie Fisher behind the scenes of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

TiL (click to go to the thread, which probably has more interesting tidbits I missed).

Bonus:

🏳️‍🌈 Ruth Ellis (1899 - 2000) was the daughter of former slaves. She came out as a lesbian when she was 16-years-old to the complete acceptance of her family. In 1937, Ruth and her longtime partner moved to Detroit from their hometown of Springfield, Illinois for the promise of higher wages. There, she became the first woman in Michigan to run her own printing business. She printed fliers, posters, and stationary in the front room of her home, which also quickly became a hotspot for Black LGBTQ social life. Before long, Ruth was helping those who came around in any way she could, including by paying for college tuitions. After the Stonewall uprising, 70-year-old Ruth began giving speeches in support of gay and lesbian rights all across the country. She remained an activist for the rest of her long life and even spent her 100th birthday leading the San Francisco Dyke March. At the time of her death at 101, she was recognized as the oldest out lesbian in the US. She is the subject of the documentary "Living With Pride: Ruth C. Ellis @ 100" and is the namesake of the Ruth Ellis Center, a shelter for homeless and at-risk LGBTQ youth in Detroit.

Celebrate Ruth Ellis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Ellis_(activist)

“My name is Brianna Meeks, and I have an offbeat but clear-headed dream. It has been on my mind since the death of my beloved grandfather in 2007. After thirteen years of wishing, I have the chance to make it come true.

My grandparents were named Arthur and Annie Stone, and they were the children of sharecroppers. They too were sharecroppers until the 1960s, when they were able to purchase their farm outright. They raised three daughters there, including my mama.

When Papa died, Nanny could not run the farm on her own, and my mom and her sisters made the choice to sell it. I was 17 at the time, and the longing for that farmhouse with the dark green shutters has stayed on my shoulders all these years since.

Simply put: I am going to try to buy it back. Miraculously, the current owner is looking to sell it.

This is the one chance I’ll ever have to do this.

For me, the story begins in 1995, the first of countless times I remember piling in the car with my siblings and parents, driving the three and a half hours from Atlanta, GA, to Nanny and Papa’s house in Petersburg, TN. This farmhouse was where we spent countless happy Thanksgivings, Christmases, and summer holidays.

But for Arthur and Annie stone, the story starts 150 years before that. To the period just after the American Civil War called Reconstruction.

Quick history lesson if you need one: Agriculture was the economic force of the Southern United States, and the enslavement of people descended from stolen Africans kept the economy afloat. After the enslaved became freedmen, General Sherman proposed that the land seized from former Confederates should be divided among the freedmen, as repayment for their treatment.

This is commonly referred to as Forty Acres and a Mule, and it was a promise that wasn’t kept. Instead, the land was returned to the former Confederates who previously owned it.

The land needed to be worked. And there was an entire population -- only recently considered citizens in their own right -- who needed work and food and security. Enter: sharecropping.

Sharecropping was an exploitative model. It worked like this: a tenant would live on and work a portion of a landowner’s plantation, farm, or land. In exchange, that tenant kept a (usually small) portion of the crop come harvest time. Sharecroppers had very little agency. They didn’t own their own equipment, they were forced to accept the prices the landowners were willing to pay, and if they stuck up for themselves they risked their livelihood and family home.

In the last years of her life, Nanny told me that she had taken to being pen pals with the son of the landowner she sharecropped for. He apologized for the ways he and his family had wronged my grandparents. It is no small feat that these people -- my people -- born not even 60 years after the dissolution of slavery, broke the mold of their families and somehow overcame admitted wrongdoing. That feels like another miracle.

If all I ever accomplished in my life was buying back my grandparents’ farm and restoring it to something they would be proud of, that would be enough. I want to live a life where my siblings and our children can go back there for holidays. I want my mama to spend more Thanksgivings or Christmases there in her life.

So I am asking you to please help me get my ancestral home back. I would appreciate anything you can contribute. And if you are not in a position to donate, all I ask is that you share the link to this campaign with everyone you can think of.

Nanny and Papa spent their entire lives in the picturesque state of Tennessee; living through the roaring twenties, the great depression, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights movement, and so much more.

Their lives make up the history of that land. It’s now on me to determine the future of it.”