Brookfield Paperworks
Paste papers have been the major product of Elisabeth’s North Brookfield, Massachusetts studio for more than twenty years. Using the traditional technique of pigments on paper, she brings to them her own designs and colors. Into the wet starch paste she draws, rolls, stamps, or tools various patterns, often producing three-dimensional effects, many of them one-of- a-kind. From the dried sheets she fabricates boxes, journals, cards, port-folios, and framed color studies and collages. Others use her papers for displays, advertising, and bookbindings.
Born and raised in Zurich, Switzerland, Elisabeth graduated as a kindergarten teacher from the cantonal school in St. Gall in 1964, which emphasized arts and crafts. During five years of teaching she took course in dyeing, spinning, weaving, folk painting, and woodworking. After coming to the U.S. In 1969, she both took and gave craft classes.
While raising four children, she did artwork for her husband’s letterpress printing shop, Sun Hill Press, and produced designs for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and the Boston Athenaeum.
Since 1993 she has operated her own studio. In addition to paste papers, a line of her printed pattern sheets and stationery is distributed nationally under the “Brookfield” name by OrangeArt in Woodstock, Connecticut.
