Made Thought celebrates every paper in the G . F Smith collection

If you’re the kind of person whose blood pumps a little faster when perusing beautiful paper, I suggest you sit down before going any further. G . F Smith has just released an extraordinary 400-page book which shows off every paper in its repertoire and it’s a thing of awe. Created with longtime collaborators Made Thought, The Collection shows off 45 paper ranges created over the company’s 130-year history.

“The primary concern was to create an ‘everyday’ working tool for the creative,” Made Thought’s Ben Parker explains. “Appreciating that there are a multitude of routes to select and specify a single paper, we looked to the most trusted and long-standing tools for guidance — dictionaries and encyclopaedias. The key for us was understanding how to get the user to the right piece of information (or paper) as efficiently as possible.

“The spine is bright orange so its easy to find in a busy studio; the thumb tabs aid quick navigation to the five collection categories, and the papers are sequenced from light to dark to make colour comparison easier (specifically with whites and pale shades).”

Not only is each paper given a full page (for maximum drooling), the book includes the story of each paper too, and there’s a whole range of interesting narratives interweaved among all the tactile visual loveliness. In this way it becomes not only a useful studio tool but a product in which paper-lovers will enjoy getting lost.