There is no doubt that one of our mottos is that paper is alive: many years of experience working on a daily basis with this material have shown us how it evolves and changes through its interaction with external factors, although at first sight it would appear to be an inanimate object. Humidity, light, pressure… All these “ingredients”, which are not part of the original recipe for achieving the desired finish and colour, eventually have an impact and it is essential to know how paper will react to them.
However, paper is also brought to life in the hands of the creators. The packaging designer who turns it into a packaging or container, the publisher who transforms it into a book cover, not to mention the artist who shapes it into an animal, plant, an everyday scene or countless other unimaginable forms. This was our proposal in the #MoreThanPaper action in the company of creative professionals from different disciplines: we asked them to give our paper life.
The first four results of this creative challenge are presented below.
Plego Paper: the realism of bees
One example of what paper can become is an animal that looks so real that it is as if it were about to fly off at any moment. Thus, Plego Paper, which specialises in making figures with animal forms with this material (more specifically birds, although they have also expanded their animal kingdom), converted some of our deepest Geltex tones into a couple of bees and their beehive. To this end, they used the Amarillo Cromo, Absolute Black, Tornasol and Naranja colours of this highly versatile range.
Anaquiños de Papel: fully-detailed peonies
From the above insects to one of their favourite setting-down places: flowers. Another living creature recreated in the first year of this collaboration are the peonies crafted with our materials by Anaquiños de Papel. These sisters and origami buffs, who ended up applying these techniques in the creation of artisanal decorative elements, made the most of our collection to breathe life into these flowers, imbuing them with a wealth of details and all the colour of these plants. They used the Pelline Maragda for the sepals, Pelline Grosella for the petals and Geltex Tornasol for the stamens. Moreover, they showed people how to recreate them in a workshop at the Handmade Festival.
Nekane: still lifes in contrasting colours
Designs on drawings can also look just as spectacular with a subtle use of colours and making the most of contrast. Nekane, an artist who “draws” with paper, created three still lifes thanks to the Geltex collection. The first one features Indian Red, between brown and reddish, and details in cream yellow; the second utilises the outstanding Azul Prusia paper, with the still life silhouette outlined in Indian Red; and the third and lightest one uses Amarillo Nápoles with the silhouette framed in blue. Therefore, combinations of a mere three paper colours can yield three still lifes. Simple but impactful, worthy of being framed and hung like a picture to decorate any space.
Quinn: the coming-together of the animal and plant world
If animals and plants could be made with paper as part of this intervention, then why not merge them? Samantha Quinn’s proposal (SQuinn&Co) involved a giraffe coloured with different types of leaves and the odd flower poking out from its spots, plus a very tribal-looking face. With this objective in mind, she combines a sheet of cork (Surflex Tokay) that gives the item a neutral hue that acts as a base for the figure and provides texture with a wide array of deeply-coloured papers: Geltex Indian Red, Marbrava, Césped, Verde Oscuro, Púrpura or Indigo; and a special touch with the EcoVanol Marmol Alga and the Guaflex Intenso Azur. Her aim was to construct as many layers and textures as possible, all of them hand-cut and integrated into a single figure.
In the course of this year, look out for further updates of our #MoreThanPaper action on our Instagram profile! There are also interviews with Anaquiños de Papel, Nekane y Plego Paper in our Paper Academy so you can find out more about how important this material which they use as a substrate for locations is to them.