~We may describe painting, sculpting, printmaking, and many other modes of artistic activity in terms of process. Each medium witnesses the artist passing through a succession of steps — whether proscribed in advance or organically unfolding as oil is dabbed, marble is chipped, or metal is etched — to arrive at some cumulative point. Drawing, too,...

~In his 1761 treatise on the history and processes of papermaking, Art de faire le papier, Joseph Jérôme Le Français de Lalande celebrates how, with only a collection of lowly rags, it became possible to communicate to a wide audience a seemingly limitless...