Sandy Kinnee Kimonos & Fans,
a twelve inch square PAINT SMEARED BOEK
The Mummy's Curse and the Armani Suit
There’s a reason it’s called rag paper. For centuries, ragpickers supplied the papermaking industry with cotton and linen. Discarded clothing scraps were the aluminum cans of the past. They provided a livelihood to the unskilled. At the dawn of the Industrial Age, everything changed. A rising bourgeoisie and the success of education lead to increasing demand for printed material. The impact upon paper and the rag supply chain was unanticipated. Consumption of traditional cotton and linen scraps outstripped supply. The price of rags rose. When demand for papermaking material exceeded supply, alternate sources were sought. One long forgotten trove of very, very old rags was rediscovered in the 1800s: linen wrapped Egyptian mummies. A Maine papermill owner imported a boatload of them and removed the linen wrappings. The linen was then converted into pulp with the end product being butcher wrap. Production of the brown ...
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