Why So Blue?

Nestled in the idyllic green countryside of southwestern France, alongside a sparkling river, sits a cluster of old stone buildings where the tradition of hand papermaking is alive and well.

Since the 16th century, the Moulin du Verger mill has produced paper made by hand in the European tradition, where the sheets are formed in a vat of pulp made from ground rags, pressed to remove water, and air-dried. Though machines have largely replaced this process, Le Moulin du Verger stands as one of the last remaining mills where human hands craft the paper with the help of massive wooden stampers—a hammer-like device powered by a water mill—and a powerful press that looks straight out of the Middle Ages.

To the delight of paper conservators around the world, the mill began offering workshops on making blue paper by hand in 2017 with the formation of the Blue Paper Research Consortium, a group comprised of two paper conservators, two papermakers, and a master dyer. Michelle Sullivan, associate conservator of drawings at the Getty Museum, traveled to France for a workshop in the fall of 2019 to better understand the historical blue paper she encounters in the museum’s collection of drawings. The knowledge she gained from the workshop became particularly useful as she prepared for Drawing on Blue, a Getty exhibition that explores why many artists were drawn (no pun intended) to working on blue, rather than white or brown, paper.

“I think it’s important that some of these mills survive, so that people can learn about and appreciate all that went into the production of a humble material like paper in the past. It’s why we value handmade paper as conservators, as artists, as historians,” Sullivan said. “Hopefully, that comes through in the exhibition too.”

Papermaking, Step by Step

The five-day workshop began with an overview of the papermaking tradition and the steps required to create a sheet of paper from linen and hemp rags, a practice dating to the 12th century in Europe. Historically, the rags would have come from discarded textiles such as well-worn clothing.

Students first learned about pulp preparation, which entails mixing rags with water and grinding with the stampers. During the workshop, the students also witnessed pulp being prepared using a Hollander beater—a later invention of the Dutch that passes rags through metal plates—which grinds the rags more efficiently.

Next, once the rags were well processed, the students transferred the pulp to a large vat. They practiced pulling sheets of paper by dipping a mold into the pulp and gently shaking it back and forth, left to right, to evenly distribute the fibers. “This is where you can tell the difference between an amateur and a skilled papermaker,” Sullivan said. “We watched the masters pull sheets, and they seemed to effortlessly make these beautiful sheets with the fibers all very well distributed, virtually flawless.”

Once all the water had drained, leaving behind a mesh of fibers, the students released each sheet from its mold and added it to a stack of freshly made paper with felts separating each sheet. At this stage, there is still a lot of water in the paper that needs to be removed, so the students placed the paper in a press to expel it. After pressing, students separated the sheets and hung them in the mill’s loft to dry further. Once dry, the paper can be used as is or dipped into a tub of hot gelatin, a step that seals the surface and makes it more suited for writing and drawing with ink and watercolor.

“The hardest step for me was probably releasing the sheet from the mold, because there’s lots of room for error and to introduce flaws into the sheet,” Sullivan said.

Paper, but Make It Blue

Much of the workshop focused on the process of creating blue paper. As early as the 14th century, mills in northern Italy began manufacturing it. Blue paper was initially used to wrap commodities, but artists soon began using it. The blue hue provided a helpful middle tone for artists working with white and dark drawing media, which would have required additional material and effort if working on a sheet of white paper. Blue paper was also particularly well suited for pastels, since it tends to enhance the appearance of certain colors and provides an undertone for modeling and shading.

In addition to learning how to make a sheet of paper by hand from start to finish, students also explored, under the tutelage of mill owner Jacques Brejoux and master dyer Philippe Chazelle, different materials and methods historically used to create blue paper. The first method for making it entails preparing pulp from a mixture of undyed rags and rags that have been dyed blue. The most common dye used was indigotin, which is sourced from both woad plants (native to Europe) and indigo plants (native to Asian and the Americas). This is the oldest method for creating blue paper and tends to produce sheets with a lighter, more mottled shade of blue.

For the second method, additional dye was added to the vat of pulp before pulling the sheet. This process was developed by 17th-century Dutch papermakers and results in a deeper, more uniformly blue sheet.

“I can’t help thinking about how papermakers in the Netherlands and France were looking to improve on something they found desirable, and how they did it with such technical virtuosity,” Sullivan said. “Some of these sheets are just so beautifully evenly blue and very well made. You have to become very skilled at distributing the fibers as a papermaker, and they took it to another level.”

For the third method, students dipped or brush-coated sheets of white paper with blue dye, creating what is known as blue prepared paper.

A New Perspective on Drawing on Blue

Armed with her hands-on experience creating blue paper, Sullivan found new insights into the artworks featured in Drawing on Blue. For one, she can now identify what process was used to make a work on blue paper. “We spent a lot of time under the microscope preparing for this exhibition, making assessments: Do I think this is made with mostly blue rags or a mixture of blue and white? Do I think dye is added?” Sullivan said. “Everyone left the workshop with a sample set, which I can use in the lab, comparing the ‘known’ blue papers to the drawings I’m studying, which is really helpful.”

Sullivan and Edina Adam, assistant curator of drawings and cocurator of the exhibition, have already discovered that the paper used for a drawing by the artist Giovanni Battista Naldini (below) did not obtain its blue color from recycled rags, but is a blue prepared paper that likely had been dipped in a bath of dilute indigo watercolor. “We could see little pigment particles rather than fibers that were dyed blue,” Sullivan said. This was one of several such discoveries made by the curatorial and conservation duo as they conducted research for the exhibition, shedding new light on a given artist’s practice and material preferences.