NEWSPAPER WOOD

Every day, piles of newspapers are discarded and recycled into new paper. During her study at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003, Mieke Meijer devised a solution to use this surplus of paper into a renewed material: NewspaperWood. This is created by reversing the traditional production process and reforming the paper back into a form of wood. When a NewspaperWood log is cut, the layers of paper appear like lines of wood grain or the rings of a tree and therefore resembles the aesthetic of real wood.

NewspaperWood is made by coating individual sheets of old newspaper with glue and then tightly rolling the glued sheets into logs. The glue used is solvent and plasticizers-free. The material can be treated like most other wood products by cutting, milling, sanding, and finishing with paint or varnish. When cut into planks, the layers of paper reveal wood grain-like patterns of ink. Sanding the material roughens up the fibers of the newspapers and provides a soft texture that can be left unfinished. It is a new way to use paper and shape it to create new textures, forms, furniture and other products.