Viceversa | handmade paper

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It was in 2019 that three women (Roberta Gagliardini, Melania Tozzi, and Roberta Brencio) decided to establish the social cooperative Viceversa in the small town of Fabriano, a town with a paper-making tradition dating back almost a thousand years. The town is rich in crafts and art, so much so that in 2013 it was listed among UNESCO’s Creative Cities. They enlisted the help of Luigi Mecella, a man with many years of knowledge in traditional paper-making.

The production includes not only watercolor paper but also sketchbooks and notebooks as well as other handmade papers.

On Viceversa’s website, there is a shop where you can buy watercolor paper and other products. Their watercolor paper comes in two thicknesses: 300 and 600 g/m² (140 lb and 300 lb). There is watercolor paper with a smooth surface, called “satin” by the manufacturer, with medium-grain texture, called “grana fine” and with coarse-grain texture, called “grana grossa”. The “satin” paper is slightly more expensive than the other two.

All watercolor papers are available in formats corresponding to a full sheet of paper (56ˣ76 cm, 22 X 30 inches), halved, quartered, eighth, and sixteenth sizes. They state on the website that the paper has no cut edges, which might suggest that it has deckle edges all around, but this is not the case. All sizes are torn to their size from a full sheet of paper, which is the only paper format with deckle edges on all sides. All other sizes have at least one torn side.

Viceversa’s paper is traditionally produced, a process that requires a lot of manual work and great craftsmanship. This is how manufacturing is described on Viceversa’s website:

1. Preparation of the pulp using high-quality raw materials such as cotton (mostly), linen, hemp, coniferous cellulose, natural dyes, and animal glues, which are soaked in vats.
2. Refining the pulp using a Hollander beater machine.
3. Actual papermaking process: the master papermaker dips the mold into the pulp and retrieves an amount, which can vary depending on the desired thickness of the sheet, distributing it evenly inside the mold using a sifting motion. The excess water is drained off, and the mold with the material is placed on felt to allow the sheet to release from the mold. The sheet is then stacked, one on top of the other, as more sheets are created using the same method.
4. Pressing the stack of sheets using a hydraulic press that allows for complete removal of water.
5. Drying the finished sheets in the open air on wooden drying racks.

I bought the paper with “grana fine” and “grana grossa” textures in various formats. I skipped the paper they call “satin” because I don’t like smooth watercolor paper. Both types of texture are coarser than what is usually considered coarse and fine-grained. Below is a comparison with Arches: Viceversa’s fine-grained paper is roughly the same as Arches’ coarse-grained.

The coarse grain and the generous sizing make Viceversa’s paper suitable for the use of granulating colors; the paper really highlights such properties in the colors. The same goes for scumbling or dry brush techniques, which are easy to perform on Viceversa’s paper.

If you paint on Viceversa paper without first wetting it (and then letting it dry), the paint will have difficulty adhering to the surface. This is because the generous sizing should be treated with water before the paper becomes optimal for regular painting. The first painting I did on this paper I used untreated paper. It worked well because I did a lot of scumbling in the painting, but for more typical painting, I would recommend first wetting the paper and then letting it dry before painting on it.

The next painting I tried, as I usually do, I brushed the paper with water in all directions, but it turned out to be too much water. With such a method, the paper became too absorbent and soft, at least for my way of painting. It was a bit like blotting paper. Since then, I have found that the best way to prepare the paper is to simply rinse it with water or to place it in a water bath for a minute. This way, you soften the sizing so that the paper takes the color well, while maintaining much of the surface sizing so the paper works optimally.

This is how it works with all really good watercolor papers; they all have different properties and often do not work quite well without preparatory treatment. Sometimes you have to try a few different methods before you find the right one for the paper you are using.

Wet-on-wet works well but not convincingly. If you are a fan of precise and exact and well-planned wet-on-wet transitions, you should probably choose another paper. The paper becomes “soft” when wetted and dries rather quickly. Wet-on-wet transitions become more irregular and spontaneous, which also has its charm, but you will not always get the result you expect.

It is very easy to lift off dried paint from Viceversa watercolor paper, although the edges become a bit fuzzy. Just take a lightly damp brush, and apply water to a dried paint area with a few brush strokes, then simply lift off the paint with a gentle press of a piece of kitchen paper.

The only way to buy Viceversa watercolor paper, as far as I know, is directly from the manufacturer’s website. Or directly from the paper mill if you happen to be in Fabriano.

The price for a full sheet of 300 g/m² (140 lb) (coarse-grained) is €8.50, which is about the same as a sheet of Arches. 600 g/m² (300 lb) costs €11.50, which is actually significantly cheaper than the equivalent Arches. The smaller sizes of Viceversa paper are just divided variants of the large sheet and are priced accordingly; a half sheet (56ˣ38 cm, 22ˣ15 inches) 300 g/m² costs €4.30, which is roughly half the price of a full sheet.

The price for a traditional handmade watercolor paper is incredibly affordable. So if you are interested in trying a handmade watercolor paper but the price has deterred you before, why not try Viceversa, which costs about the same as mass-produced papers, or even less if you buy 600 g/m².

The shipping cost is not very high. I bought 15 sheets in mixed sizes, the largest being ¼ sheets. The shipping cost for this was €13.17 from Italy to Sweden.

Summary

Tillverkarens hemsida: https://www.viceversapaper.it/en/
Köp Viceversas akvarellpapper: https://www.viceversapaper.it/en/product-category/sheets/