Production with ancestries
Plants were already used to produce paper in China centuries B.C., but it was the Arabs who started using old rags as raw material around 750.  In Sweden paper was originally produced from old cotton and flax rags, but as the demand for paper increased, those weren’t sufficient any longer, so that they were progressively replaced with raw material based on cellulose. In Lessebo we have kept on using flax and cotton, and have developed the technique. Nowadays we mainly use cotton linters, made from the residual fibres from the seedpods of the cotton bush.

The raw material is milled in the hollander, where the fibres can swell to give the paper the desired characteristics. Thereafter sizing is added to improve ink adhesion. The finished pulp, called stock, is than transferred to a storage chest. From there the stock is diluted with water and passed over a sad trap which collects heavier impurities, to another container, the vat. There the paper making takes place.   The paper sheets are made in a mould – a wooden frame across which a wire cloth with different textures is stretched. Another wooden frame determines the size of the sheet. For paper with a watermark, a mould with a metal wire of the desired pattern is used. When forming the sheets, the vatman and te coucher work together. The vatman dips the mould into the vat and withdraws a certain amount of stock. This is an important step, requiring great professional skill. The water drains trough the cloth in the mould while the fibres remain. Then the coucher takes the mould and transfers the sheet, which is still very wet and fragile, onto a felt.

The completed stack, one hundred sheets, is pressed in a more than one hundred years old hydraulic press in order to remove yet more water. The layer now takes over and separates the finished, but still damp paper sheets from the felts.

After pressing, the damp sheets are placed side by side in a drying machine. . Watercolour paper is then ready for use. Other papers go on to be glazed between two zinc plates. It makes the paper less rough and gives it a shiny surface on which the pen can glide more easily. After examination, each sheet is finally torn into a paper of the right format.