GOOD on PAPER

Using traditional Philippine techniques and recycled magazines and newsprint, Lori Weitzner champions the powers of page and plant with wallcoverings crafted entirely by hand.

- TRACEY MINKIN

LORI WEITZNER DOESN'T mince words. "I'm a magazine and a book person," she says, "and I hate I hate-reading magazines online or books on a Kindle. I need to touch the paper." That hankering, it turns out, inspired the Manhattan-based textile designer to plunge deeper into the form, learning papermaking on her own and then finding artisan partners worldwide to help her harness the soulful potential of the material.

"I wanted to do wallcoverings," she says. "Not wallpaper. Wallcoverings that were innovative and interesting." Mission accomplished. Twenty years later Weitzner Handmade (one of six branches of her design company) features two expressions that, while completely different in technique, are intriguing bookends that bracket a piece of paper's lifespan, from the alpha of pulp to the omega of magazine pages.

First, pulp. Going all the way back to basics, Weitzner collaborates with artisans in the Philippines who make paper by hand using traditional techniques. Harvesting fiber from plants abundant in the island nation-abaca, a type of banana; salago, a shrub; pineapple; and mulberry the makers boil the pulp in giant vats at their open-air workshop.