Once the ‘press load' has been pressed, a paper worker separates the sheets from the layers of felt. This is a delicate operation since the paper is still wet and very fragile and therefore the worker who carries out this stage of the production must be very nimble-fingered. This is how the white ‘press load' is made. The next stage is to hang the sheets over a washing line (a 100 metre long cord) with the help of a ‘frelet' (an old-fashioned wooden implement). The drying process lasts 1 to 3 days and once it is over a new pile of sheets is produced. This is necessary because during the drying process the paper crinkles up and so the pile must be kept flat with a weight on it for 4 days, so that the bumps slowly disappear. Each sheet must then be laminated. In earlier times rolling mills did not exist in paper mills and workers were employed to polish each sheet with a flint stone. This meant that the paper was perfect to write on. The technique of lamination has made this job obsolete however. The production process is now complete: all that is left to do is to sort the sheets one by one, wrap them and take them to the printer or the illustrator where they will be printed upon or decorated using a stencilling technique. The prettiest sheets are kept plain for use by calligraphers, artists, editors or watercolour painters...Or they might be made into writing paper, business cards, greetings cards, lampshades etc...