Paper is the part of a book most readers never name, and the part they remember longest in the hand. Its weight, its tooth, the way it takes ink — these decide how a page feels before a single word is read.
We choose stock the way a builder chooses timber: for how it will age. A page should still turn cleanly in fifty years, the ink still sitting where it was set.
This is the first of a short series on the materials of the press — what they are, why we pick them, and what it costs to pick well.