This project chronicles handmade and mould made paper images produced by a scanning-laser confocal microscope. This type of microscopy is unsurpassed for producing sharp three-dimensional images and allows us to see not just surface features, but often all the way through the sheet. The microscope scans successively deeper layers of a specimen and then uses a computer to assemble the various images into a single composition. This technique eliminates blurring and scatter. The resulting compositions have proved to be not just helpful in understanding how the fibers are interlaced within a specific paper, but are also esthetically of interest as works of art.
Below are some of the examples of images from this awesome project:
Arches 100% cotton rag paper. Scanning electron microscope image at 1000x magnification. (Source)
Papyrus. Scanning electron microscope image at 1000x magnification. (Source)
“Paper made by wasps (Polistes fuscatus). Humans were not the first to master the technology of paper making. The first to practice this art was the Paper Wasp. Notice the barbed structure in this image. It is a glochid from a cactus (Opuntia).” Scanning electron microscope image at 1000x magnification. (Source)