Paper Review: John Gerard’s Hemp and Flax Paper

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I folded Stars among Hexagons from a sheet of John Gerard’s handmade hemp and flax paper. These two ingredients give the paper a lot of strength, crispness, and rigidity even though it is relatively thin. The mixture is well-balanced for my needs. Paper with too much flax results in a crease much lighter in color than non-creased areas, which I consider undesirable for most models. In this well-balanced fiber mix, the crease does not differ from flat areas too much.

The sheet was smooth on one side and has a slight texture from the sieve on the other. Against the light, it was translucent, but in reflected light it was not.

Precreasing went well, with the creases being clean and narrow. Backcreasing was easy as well. The paper did not stretch and preserved its geometry very well. I was not able to feel any paper grain at all which was an advantage when folding from a hex grid. The only culprit was a few hard particles in the paper that I ran into while precreasing, but their impact was rather minor. Collapsing went just as well as precreasing.

Overall, this was a very good paper to fold with, quite similar to John Gerard’s abaca-flax paper.