The Art of Making Beautiful Paper – Crane Stationery

Who doesn't love to go into specialty paper stores and buy fun, luxurious note cards, or stationery to write your personal message on. When I go into a paper store, I have to resist buying everything insight since I am a paper lover. But did you non-designer print people out there know that these beautiful bright white papers with their gorgeous embellishments are produced in not-so-visually pleasant looking locations.

I was reading one of my favorite daily blogs, Oh So Beautiful Paper, and Nole, the blogger, got a behind-the-scenes tour of Crane & Co printing shop. Crane & Co are well-known and dominate the specialty paper industry in terms of design, quality and craftsmanship. We all have received a Crane & Co card at one point in our life.

Have a look at Crane & Co's main printing floor; it's quite amazing the process that it takes to make something like a 5 x 7 card. All these presses you see are engrav­ing, let­ter­press, and ther­mog­ra­phy print­ers. In-person these printing presses are HUGE in comparison to the flat, delicate paper that come out of these machines.

Lots of ink is everywhere. Custom colors are mixed together to produce those perfect Pantone colors that us designers like to match to main color consistency.

The Etching bath station (above). You can see the brown chemicals that have leaked over on the sides. This is part of the pre-production process and is used for cus­tom text designs etched out of a cop­per plate. These etched plates help produce the designs seen on invitations and/or business cards. Finished etched plate designs are below, and they hold some of the most delicate patterns and details imaginable to the visible eye.

After many pre-production hours, splashes of paint & chemicals, several careful hands, loads of paper rolling onto the presses, 2-3 ink runs and lots of cuts & trimming down to size, and this is what you get... paper artistry at its finest.

To read in detail the process, and see all the pictures from Nole's visit to Crane & Co's print shop, click here.

{Images via OhSoBeautifulPaper.com}