The Sunday Paper #545

March 2, 2025

I’m coming up for a bit of fresh air after a busy month of weaving with my Weave Through Winter online class (I’ll be sharing a video of the amazing work created by participants soon). Thankfully, this course always leaves me feeling energized for what’s next. During these troubling political times, I will continue to focus on creativity as a way forward.

One quick opportunity: a spot has opened in my Taos Paper Retreat. We’ll be weaving paper during the week of July 21st. Click here to read all about it and join us!

I’d never heard of silk embroidered postcards, which were manufactured during WWI (with a history prior to that) by women living in towns near the front lines in France and Belgium as gifts for soldiers. The postcards were hand stitched, but they were produced en masse – embroidered on long strips of silk mesh by women working at home – and then sent to factories in cities such as Paris for finishing. There, they were cut into individual pieces and mounted onto postcards.

These First World War silk postcards conveyed messages between soldiers and families. Handcrafted by women embroiderers near the front lines, they are beautiful examples of sentimentality and wartime industry.

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This headline caught my eye. “The World Has Gone Crazy and So Am I” is now on view in the Beatrice M. Haggerty Gallery at the University of Dallas (through March 21). Daniel Heyman is a printmaking professor at Rhode Island School of Design who prints on unique handmade papers. “The works are a part of his ongoing conversation with art and artists conducted through pictures, featuring spontaneous sketches and layered drawings in mediums like sumi ink, graphite, and gouache.”

© 2025, Daniel Heyman. Photo by Amelia Ebent.

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(This might be behind a NYTimes paywall). My friend Mindell Dubansky got a lovely review in the Times about her Blook project, which is the result of many years of research and collecting. A new exhibition at the Center for Book Arts in New York features a range of objects — transistor radios, lanterns, cigarette lighters and more — designed to look like books.

“There’s so much emotion in these objects,” said Dubansky. “From those who made them and those who received them.” This trench lighter was created by an unknown maker circa 1914-17. Credit…Graham Dickie/The New York Times

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Darryl Bedford was recently on my podcast (see below) and his garments were recently on the runway at London Fashion Week.

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Paper Tidbits

• Have you listened to my conversation with Darryl Bedford on Paper Talk?
• We’ll be folding paper at the Red Cliff Paper Retreat in August (August 18-22, three spots left)