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I
wanted to print all these documents I've collected over the years, but the paper
was the hardest thing to get. The commercial parchment I've seen looks too phony
and the other people selling hand worked paper were worse. It all looked awful.
The only really good looking paper is the stuff I craft.
The paper is prepared in my
studio, which takes a lot of time and is a real mess. I've looked at a lot of ancient papers and documents to see where they crack, wrinkle, tear and smudge.
Every effort is made to duplicate that look so your document will look like the
real thing. Everyone will be fooled when they see your name
on an historic document.
These documents are only meant for amusement purposes. I hope
none of you will ever betray my trust and try to prove you're Count Smirnoff or
some other pretender nonsense. The only pretenders I approve of to use my
documents with authority are PIRATE Pretenders! Aargggh!
I used to be a forger, but
in the wee hours of September 12, 2001 I woke up in fear that I had made one of
the terrorists' identity cards! I rushed to my computer and broke every link
with my data base that had anything to do with forgery. It was scary. So now I
only make old documents and you'd have to be over a hundred years old to be able
to use one of them for identification.
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These Letters of Marque and Reprisals are
copied from the original letters.
Many of them are translated from Latin
Others have been translated from Old English
(which is just about as hard to translate as the Latin
was!)
I've changed some of the wording for clarity, and edited some of the
language for space and format.
I have tried to be as
faithful to the originals a possible.
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To get the really old and
used-up look the paper is first folded, banged and slammed repeatedly until it looks very worn and tired.
Then tiny tears are
strategically placed around the edges so it will look like
old paper does when it gets brittle and cracked. I've studied old books and
manuscripts so we could imitate the aging process for my Olde Paper. The idea is to make
it look like it was a long lost document that had been abused by
carelessness and time.
Next comes crinkling and flattening-out.
Some of them rip and can't be used. I only can make 30 sheets at a time and I
loose some of those in the wrinkle process and more in the cooking process. The
processing set up isn't very efficient.
It's definitely an artisan thing.
After that the hanging
paper is soaked under heat in a mixture of different leaves
and other stuff. Soaking is the worst part of the process because more of the
sheets fall apart or tear when they're wet and taken out of the bath and
separated.
Last comes the drying. Each
fragile paper is set in the sun to dry and get crisp (they're usually blown all
over the yard when the wind comes up).
 When dried they are further flattened and pressed in my sooper-dooper document
press. They stay under pressure for about six months to a year. The effect is
that the paper looks like it was pressed within the pages of a book or under a
pile of old ledgers that have long since been forgotten.
Tip: Like any old document
ours should be kept away from direct sunlight to reduce fading. sunlight is the
bane of old documents.
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