Journals and paste paper

The Journals

Every journal is 192 pages, folded into sections and sewn on three linen tapes, so it lies open on a desk without being held down.

A journal sewn this way opens as flat at the first page as at the middle, and it never needs breaking in. The corners are rounded, so one that lives in a bag does not dog ear, and the cover is paste paper over board, made in this room.

A5 and A4 are the stock sizes, and there are usually a few of each on the shelf, ready the same week. A journal in another size, a wide sketchbook that opens along the short side or a slim pocket book, takes two weeks.

• A5 journal, 192 pages

  980 CZK

  • Ready the same week

• A4 journal, 192 pages

  1,450 CZK

  • Ready the same week

• A size made to order

  from 1,200 CZK

  Tell us the page size and how many pages, and whether it opens along the long side or the short one.

  • 2 weeks

Jitka's favourite subject

Paste Paper, Made on Mondays

Monday is paste day, which is why the door is shut.

I start at about eight, on the two ring hob at the back of the room, with 45 g of wheat starch and 400 ml of cold water, whisked smooth before the heat goes on. Then it is twenty minutes of stirring with a wooden spoon. The paste goes from milky to thick to clear, and if you stop too early it goes lumpy and you can smell it.

45 g

Wheat starch

400 ml

Cold water

20 min

Stirring

4 days

A pot keeps

When it has cooled I strain it twice through a nylon stocking. The stocking lives in a drawer marked paste only, because in the first year somebody borrowed it. Straining twice takes out every lump, and a lump in paste paper is a hole in the pattern.

Then the colour. I mix pigment into small pots of paste, a spoonful at a time, until it looks too strong, because it dries lighter. A sheet goes down on the bench, damp, and the coloured paste is brushed over it in an even coat. Then the pattern goes in, with whatever suits the day: combs I cut by hand from old plastic cards, a rubber roller with string wound round it, the side of my thumb.

No two sheets are the same, and I stopped trying to make them match years ago. A comb dragged in waves gives what I call Vineyard, rows bending like the slopes south of the city. A fine comb pulled straight down and then lightly across makes Rain on Tram Wire. A wide comb pushed through in long furrows is Moravian Ploughing, and that one is the hardest to keep even.

The papers dry flat overnight on lines strung across the room, and on Tuesday morning they are the first thing you see when the door opens. A pot of paste keeps four days, so Friday's papers use the last of it, and those are usually the thinnest and the most interesting.

Every journal cover and every endpaper in every rebind comes from one of these Mondays. When you write, you can name a pattern and a colour, or leave it to me. Most people leave it to me, and I think they are right.

Jitka