Arnold Grummer - a GREAT month long celebration

We are celebrating the man, the myth and the legend of Arnold Grummer all month long. To start us off is an article written by Claude Aimée for the Friends of Dard Hunter blog. 

In 1961 Arnold E. Grummer joined the Institute of Paper Chemistry in Appleton as Editor of Publications. 

Arnold gained his knowledge and excitement for the science of paper making from the staff and especially the scientists at the Institute. They generously shared their scientific knowledge with him as he wrote for many publications about their amazing experiments and achievements. 

As Arnold spent more and more time doing tours and publicizing the Institute, he asked then President John Strange, whom he greatly admired, to authorize funds for building a transparent model of the standard British hand sheet former. This was a tool from the labs for testing paper sheets and was standard world wide. Arnold saw this tool as a way to better explain the miracle (to him) of the bonding of the cellulose fiber. 

Funds were awarded and the tours were marvelous. Later, when management changed and emphasis on the move to Atlanta became the focus of the Institute, the machine was awarded to Arnold. He immediately named it The Great American Paper Machine (Arnold liked the word 'great') and with encouragement from his wife, he bought an orange-red van, had it painted with stars and stripes, and then took his demo, workshops, electron micrographs, and acquired knowledge of paper science and papermaking history on the road. 

He traveled from coast to coast and in Canada. His passion for hand papermaking spawned a small business, Greg Markim, Inc, or later Arnold Grummer's, as every where he went he inspired people to want to make paper, too. He had numerous opportunities to appear on TV and his demos are on youtube.


In addition to duties as General Editor, he was later appointed Curator of the Dard Hunter Paper Museum, housed at the Institute. Here he facilitated research and networking among founders of the hand papermaking movement in America which grew into The Friends of Dard Hunter, an association of paper, book and letter arts. The Friends awarded Arnold their Lifetime Achievement Award in part `for sharing your infectious joy of the craft with us all.