Hand made paper company in Indiana profiled [From the web]

GARY, IN, Sept. 8, 2010 (Local News) - It's not often that a couple of ex-hippies can resurrect a whole industry. But that's a claim Howard and Kathryn Clark, the founders of Twinrocker Paper, can make. The stock market crash of 1929 closed the last of the hand-crafted paper companies in the United States. More than 40 years passed before Howard Clark, a mechanical engineer, industrial designer and native of Brookston, Ind., and his wife, Kathryn Clark, an Indianapolis-born artist and printmaker, founded Twinrocker Handmade Paper and revived this craft. The Clarks learned to make paper the old-fashioned, hand-made way for artists, specialty book publishers, printmakers and people seeking hand-made paper for calligraphy and formal invitations.

"Everybody in the hand papermaking community knows about Twinrocker," said Tom Bannister, executive director of the not-for-profit organization, Handpapermaking Inc., which publishes a magazine, newsletter, blog and artist registry dedicated to hand papermaking. "Theirs was the first viable mill in the hand papermaking renaissance that started in '60s and '70s, the first to make a go of it."

Bannister said that Kathryn and Howard Clark were the perfect team. "Between the two of them they had to figure out and rediscover how a hand mill paper operation operated," Bannister said. "Howie had to design equipment and Kathryn had to meet with artists using the paper to discover what they needed."

Post-Tribune - Brookston home to rare hand-made paper company

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