The book is quarter-bound in cloth with a rounded back. A facsimile of a Chevron Gel-Git pattern made in 2017 by Regina St. John is shown full-size. The title is composed in one of Louis John Pouchée’s elaborately decorated alphabets, designed by Pouchée in 1820 for sale to poster-printers. These letters, though antedating the book’s subject by over a century, share a sensibility with the work featured therein: utilitarian objects made extraordinary through exuberant craft.

At left, a full-size detail of Ingrid Butler and Dana Draper’s underpainted marbled paper Autumnal Flame, extended into the main title.

Introduction to the main narrative, showing a full-size detail of Frozen Smoke, a 1997 marbled paper by Thomas Leech. In general, the papers in the collection run between 16 × 20 and 24 × 36 inches, so there was never the possibility of showing a full sheet. It’s important to see the designs at full scale, though, so the book is packed with details like this one; full sheets are shown at ⅓ actual scale.

Let’s look at a few pages from the 1960s section. Here’s the opening, featuring a detail of an early experiment by Paul Maurer. The narrative runs to the left side of a given page, with the right two columns given to smaller reproductions and ephemera: in this case, Samuel Webb’s 1962 article in American Artist that served as a primary text for many of Pattern and Flow’s artists.

There was a lot of ancillary material: books, magazines, tools, letters, etc. In keeping with our philosophy of direct labeling (about which see practically any other book on this site), we worked hard to show illustrations as close to their textual references as possible, an enterprise that benefited by having a sympathetic editor in Livia Tenzer.

As mentioned above, full sheets are shown at ⅓ actual size. The squarish nature of the book derives expressly from this decision: papers could be portrait or landscape in orientation, according to their makers’ wishes. The book accommodated both easily, without the need for crossovers (except in the case of Jake Benson’s massive Old Dutch sheet). At left is an overmarbled paper for which artist Paul Maurer used Tabasco sauce as a dispersant.

Each artist is shown in a small squarecut portrait (ideally but not always contemporaneous with the section in which they appear) rendered in black and white, to separate them from the brightly colored work. At left is a marbled vignette by Norma Rubovits; at right is a marbled sheet (Stone pattern on Stormont base) by Peggy Skycraft, shown over the dispersing tool she invented to make it.

At left, Peggy Skycraft and Jack Townes’ blue Peacock pattern marbled paper, used extensively in packaging for Sambuca Romana.

The end of the 1960s chapter, showing an elegant marbled paper in a Wave pattern by the late Don Guyot; at right, two experimental papers (from left, Purple Monchromatical Monomaniacal Merry-Go-Round and Inelegant Reject #1221) from Bay-area iconoclast Olaf, who, though he never sold his work, has been an important vector for the sharing of knowledge.

Chapter divider showing detail of a marbled paper with collage made by John Coventry in the early 1970s.

Pattern and Flow ends with detailed, illustrated, and cross-referenced biographical sketches on each artist included in the Paper Legacy Project.