La Papeterie Saint-Armand closes its Montreal store
Montreal’s Saint-Armand paper mill will soon be closing its location on 3700, rue Saint-Patrick.
According to the CBC News article by Matthew Lapierre, A Montreal mill where handmade paper was made for decades is closing. they will be moving to the workshop currently under construction in Laurentians and downsizing their production.
Image credit: La Papeterie Saint-Armand
The reason for the closure? Frequent floods and increasing costs are some of them. In conversation with Catherine Lalonde in La papeterie Saint-Armand ferme son atelier de Montréal, Denise Lapointe says:
When Montreal was a cheaper city, it attracted artists from everywhere, who came to work for us in the early days. Artists no longer have the means to live in Montreal; studios and apartments are too expensive there. […]
For a while, we couldn’t find any more rags. Cotton is increasingly contaminated by polyester, and paper demands 100%, without contamination. There, we have a lot of rags, but for how long? With the paper machine and the beater, it took us from 700 to 1050 pounds per week.
La Papeterie Saint-Armand, founded in 1979 by David Carruthers and today operated by him and his wife Denise Lapointe, is widely known among book artists for the exquisite hand-made paper. Their papers have been used by Canadian publishers such as the Barbaran Press, Lumiere Press, Gaspereau Press and others. In 1982 and 1983 respectively, they produced papers used for The Proclamation of the Constitution Act, signed by HRM Queen Elizabeth II, and Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
Lapointe and Carruthers have been awarded the Robert R. Reid Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Book Arts in Canada in 2017.
Further reading
Saint-Armand, www.st-armand.com
The Globe and Mail, The old-fashioned ways of Montreal fine-paper mill La Papeterie Saint-Armand
Pulp and Paper Canada, La Papeterie Saint-Armand: Success Producing Hand-Made Paper
