The conservation studio has ruined me for new paper
Spent the morning at work lifting foxing stains off a 1890s map with nothing but a brush and a very patient person watching me. Then I came home to my own table and couldn't touch the fresh sheets I'd bought. They felt like they had nothing to say yet.
I know that is a slightly ridiculous position for someone who cuts up old paper for a living. But there it is. The new stack has been sitting there since Tuesday and I've been rearranging the same six torn fragments instead.
I think it's the smell. Old paper has that faint sweet-sour thing going on and new paper just smells of nothing.
Anyway. If anyone has found a way to make new paper less smug I'd like to hear it.
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the smell thing is real, and it's not just nostalgia. old paper is acidic, it's been off-gassing for a hundred years, that sweet-sour is the lignin going. new sheets smell like nothing because nothing's happened to them yet. kind of hard to argue with a material that's already got a history on it.
though honestly the six fragments you keep rearranging probably have more to say than the whole stack. sometimes the untouched pile is just sitting there waiting to be ruined by you and you're not ready for that yet.