BEHIND THE BRAND: ST CUTHBERTS MILL

St Cuthberts Mill have been producing their celebrated quality artist papers on the same site since the 1700s, making three of the most popular watercolour papers used by artists today - Bockingford, Saunders Waterford, and Millford.

Surrounded by the rolling green hills and idyllic country lanes of Somerset in South West England, the mill is situated on the banks of the River Axe not far from the ancient cathedral city of Wells. All their watercolour, printmaking, and fine art inkjet papers are made using one of the few remaining cylinder mould machines left in the world. This traditional process involves a team of master papermakers who work closely with the machine as the paper evolves towards the final product, where it is carefully hand-finished.

St Cuthberts Mill has a strong commitment to protecting the environment, using sustainably sourced wood-free pulp, and returning the pure limestone filtered waters taken from the River Axe during manufacture free from any papermaking additives.

We visited St Cuthberts Mill to find out how their watercolour paper is made, how they test every batch by hand, and their commitment to protecting the environment.

Using one of the last remaining working cylinder mould machines dedicated to making watercolour paper, St Cuthberts use it to make all of their artist papers. The cylinder mould machine combines the consistency of machine-made papers with the stability of handmade paper. Today, most paper is made on a Fourdrinier machine, a large, industrial machine designed to produce vast amounts of paper very quickly.

While a Fourdrinier machine makes consistent batches of paper at high speed, the finest watercolour papers are made using a cylinder mould machine. One of the key differences is that in Fourdrinier-made paper, the paper fibres uniformly line up in the machine direction (this is why a sheet of copier paper is easily torn in one direction, but less easily torn in the other). Cylinder mould-made paper is more similar to handmade paper in that the paper fibres have a random orientation, facing in all directions. This improves the stability of the paper and decreases the amount that it buckles when wet, making cylinder mould-made paper suitable for watercolour painting. 

PSEUDO-DECKLE EDGE BEING CREATED 
ON A CYLINDER MOULD MACHINE

St Cuthberts Paper Mill

The process of making cylinder mould-made paper has barely changed since its invention in the 19th Century. The production begins with the paper pulp. St Cuthberts’ Saunders Waterford, Millford, and Somerset papers are made using 100% cotton linters, while Bockingford is made with woodfree chemical pulp (a wood pulp with acidic ‘woody’ components, such as lignin, removed).

The paper pulp is picked up from the vat by a slowly rotating cylinder mould. The cylinder is covered with a wire mesh and, as it rotates, the water flows through the mesh and the pulp forms a web on the outside of the cylinder. 

The fibrous sheet is transferred onto a continuously moving felt-lined belt and further processed through sections of the machine to dry, create texture and add external sizing, depending on the requirements of each paper.

Far from being an entirely mechanised process, the skilled papermakers at St Cuthberts need to work in tandem with the machine, making adjustments according to the natural variation in the organic materials used in the process, as well as the weight, content, and surface texture of the paper that is being made. At the dry end of the cylinder mould machine, the paper is wound onto a reel and taken to their finishing department (known as ‘The Salle’). All paper is hand finished, whether it’s embossing, creating a deckle edge, counting sheets, or wrapping.

A sample from each batch is tested by hand for a number of different requirements, including weight, surface texture, porosity, wet strength, surface strength, and absorbency. Each paper has a different set of specifications which have to be taken into consideration. For example, Somerset printmaking paper is designed to be absorbent to accept layers of printmaking ink, so the results of the tests will be very different to Millford watercolour paper, which is deliberately created to have a high resistance to water. Here are three of the many tests carried out on every batch of St Cuthberts paper:  

Dilute washes of watercolour are applied to a paper sample to check for faults in the surface or sizing of the sheet, which would show up in the wash as mottling or patchiness.

Lines of ink are inspected for feathering (a sign of low sizing), or skipping (where the ink has not been absorbed fully into the sheet, forming a broken line).

Sealing waxes of different adhesive 
strengths are pressed onto the paper and, once cool, pulled off to test the surface strength of the paper.

PREPARING THE PULP WITH
WATER FROM THE RIVER AXE

St Cuthberts choose their raw materials with the environment in mind. Their wood-free pulp, which is used to make their Bockingford watercolour paper, is sourced from managed forests which plant new trees to replace the ones they use. Saunders Waterford, Milford and Somerset papers are made using cotton linters, a by-product of the textile industry.

Papermaking requires a supply of clean water and all paper mills are located on or near a water source. The River Axe begins in the Mendip Hills, and its waters are filtered naturally through limestone.

Maintaining the river’s cleanliness is important not only for the production of paper at St Cuthberts, but also for the biodiversity of the Somerset countryside. The River Axe and the surrounding area is home to a variety of wildlife including trout (a known sign of a healthy river), deer, rabbits, foxes, badgers, herons, woodpeckers, and kingfishers. No hazardous chemicals are released into the river, and all materials used are chosen to ensure that the mill does not harm the surrounding environment. The mill returns the water it uses to the river, free from any papermaking additives.

The St Cuthberts range encompasses watercolour, printmaking, and digital fine art papers, all of which are made to the highest specifications, and produced by skilled craftsmen using knowledge and experience passed down through the generations.

Saunders Waterford watercolour paper is endorsed by the Royal Watercolour Society and is respected for its superior cotton content and archival standards. Produced from 100% cotton linters, it is traditionally made on the cylinder mould machine, before being hand finished by the highly skilled papermakers at St Cuthberts. Due to the gelatine-sized surface, this is a strong and resilient paper designed to handle scrubbing techniques and masking fluid removal.

Bockingford is a popular and affordable mould-made watercolour paper made with woodfree chemical pulp. As with Saunders Waterford, the characteristic surface is created using natural woollen felts and each sheet is buffered with calcium carbonate to increase archival stability. Bockingford is renowned for its readiness to colour lifting, and archival integrity.

Somerset is an elegant and hardworking printmaking paper trusted by printmakers around the world. Mould-made from 100% cotton, it is flexible and malleable when damp, adapting readily to the surface of the printing plate to ensure a stable and rich ink distribution. Its durability and high archival standards will give a long life to finished editions of work.

Millford watercolour paper has been specifically designed to be highly water resistant. The internal sizing makes the paper less absorbent, which causes watercolour washes to behave differently from traditional papers and create richer, denser pigment effects. It is mould-made from 100% archival cotton and has a beautiful surface created using natural woollen felts.

Botanical Ultra Smooth is a hot pressed watercolour paper mould-made from a 50:50 mix of cotton and pulp. This high white acid-free 300gsm paper is particularly good for detailed techniques such as botanical painting.

The Bockingford Inkjet and Somerset Enhanced ranges of inkjet fine art papers are made using the same time-honoured processes as St Cuthberts other papers. Both ranges have an elegant fine art feel and use an ink-receptive coating to produce impressive, high quality images.