14/06/2026
I love the feathery texture of cotton rag - and the joy that comes from the colours smudging and drifting into the paper from the petals.
I love the slow, organic nature of the whole process and how natural additions - in this case, dried dandelion, yarrow, and seed pods - whether folded into the pulp or added to the vat - create their own unique design; no two pieces of paper are the same.
Papermaking suits my feral creativity. I struggle with ‘accurate’ and ‘intended’ results, I feel beauty in a different “meant to be”, in what arises naturally.
On this particular piece I added rose petals and cornflowers to the sheet once it was pulled and the pulp was still wet, pressing them in by hand. But the beauty is that it really doesn’t matter where you place the petals; they will always look lovely (at least to me!)
Other times, I add the petals directly into the batch with the other botanicals - and what you get is a beautifully random and natural design.
Particularly lovely to me are the pieces I make when I take the time to make the cotton rag by hand, from scraps of cotton. And it feels most precious when I include wild grasses, seeds, petals, leaves, moss and other botanicals gathered from my garden or the countryside I love, surrounding my Teifi Valley home.
This batch was made outside on a wild-weather early June afternoon with rainwater.
The colours dry into much more muted tones compared to when the sheet is still wet, with an antique romantic feel.
And this is one of the things I love the most: the romance of it all. From wandering by the river as the flow carves its shape into the land, through the meadows woven into the landscape, or up high on the top road - heading out into the wilderness, amongst ancient stones, where the Cambrian mountains are beginning - feeling like you have stepped back in time, wildly beautiful and remote - to gather botanicals, or collecting them from the garden at home, some of which I have grown from seed, to the piece of paper, pulled with love, there is the romance and wonder of nature, and a feeling of being part of it all, in every step.
