Found a 1930s Swedish atlas at the flea market and I've been tearing it up all week
Bought a 1938 school atlas for 40 kronor at a flea market in Majorna. The paper is that soft, slightly yellowed stock that takes a tear beautifully, and the map plates are printed in this washed-out pale green and rose that I could not mix if I tried.
So I've spent four evenings tearing up Småland and bits of the Baltic. Small pieces, 2-3 cm, nothing bigger. The problem is I know exactly what I'm destroying and it makes me slow. A page of Finland, gone. Also I keep stopping to read the place names. There is a village called Krokek and I have no idea what to do with that information, but I have it now.
Conservation brain is fighting the collage brain. Every time I tear I hear a small voice telling me this is an irreplaceable object. It's a mass-printed school atlas from 1938, there are thousands. Still.
Half of me thinks I should have photographed it first and worked from prints. The other half thinks that would have killed the whole point.
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The part about knowing exactly what you're destroying is the whole thing, isn't it. I work in smalti and salvaged tile and I have the same problem with old printed material. You cannot tear it fast, because the tearing is the decision.
One practical thing: the soft yellowed stock usually tears clean along the grain and ragged against it. If you're cutting 2-3cm pieces, tear a strip first and check which way it wants to go, then work with that. Saves you a lot of fuzzy edges you'll curse later.
And Krokek is a real place, outside Norrköping. Now you know. Good luck with Småland.
"the tearing is the decision", ok that one's going in my head now. I don't work in tile but I destroy a lot of paper and I've never thought about it like that. I always frame it as losing something, not choosing.
The grain tip is genuinely useful, I've been fighting fuzzy edges on old book pages forever and never once checked which way the stock wanted to go. Feel like an idiot in the best way.
And Krokek. Krokek. I'd have stopped too.
Framing it as losing something is the natural way to see it, but it's not the only one. The sheet was going to be a sheet forever otherwise, and now it can be two things.
Grain first, always. I learned it the hard way in the conservation studio, where you get very polite about not fighting the paper. Hold it up to the light, tear a scrap corner, and it tells you which way it wants to go.
The strip test is a good tip, I've been going at the corners and cursing quietly at the fuzzy edges. Grain runs down the page on this atlas, so I should be fine if I stop fighting it.
Smalti and salvaged tile sounds like a harder version of the same problem. Tile doesn't forgive a bad break the way paper does.