Wheatpaste (also known as flour and water paste, flour paste, or simply paste) is a gel or

liquid Liquid is a state of matter with a definite volume but no fixed shape. Liquids adapt to the shape of their container and are nearly incompressible, maintaining their volume even under pressure. The density of a liquid is usually close to th ...

adhesive Adhesive, also known as glue, cement, mucilage, or paste, is any non-metallic substance applied to one or both surfaces of two separate items that binds them together and resists their separation. The use of adhesives offers certain advantage ...

made from wheat flour or

starch Starch or amylum is a polymeric carbohydrate consisting of numerous glucose units joined by glycosidic bonds. This polysaccharide is produced by most green plants for energy storage. Worldwide, it is the most common carbohydrate in human diet ...

and water. It has been used since antiquity for various arts and crafts such as

bookbinding Bookbinding is the process of building a book, usually in codex format, from an ordered stack of paper sheets with one's hands and tools, or in modern publishing, by a series of automated processes. Firstly, one binds the sheets of papers alon ...

, '' découpage'',

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

papier-mâché file:JacmelMardiGras.jpg, upright=1.3, Mardi Gras papier-mâché masks, Haiti Papier-mâché ( , , - the French term "mâché" here means "crushed and ground") is a versatile craft technique with roots in ancient China, in which waste paper is s ...

, and adhering

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses, Feces#Other uses, herbivore dung, or other vegetable sources in water. Once the water is dra ...

poster A poster is a large sheet that is placed either on a public space to promote something or on a wall as decoration. Typically, posters include both typography, textual and graphic elements, although a poster may be either wholly graphical or w ...

s and notices to walls.

Types

A critical difference among wheat pastes is the division between those made from flour and those made from starch. Vegetable flours contain both

gluten Gluten is a structural protein naturally found in certain Cereal, cereal grains. The term ''gluten'' usually refers to the elastic network of a wheat grain's proteins, gliadin and glutenin primarily, that forms readily with the addition of water ...

and

. Over time the gluten in a flour paste cross-links, making it very difficult to release the adhesive. Using only starch, a fine quality, fully reversible paste can be produced. The latter is the standard adhesive for paper conservation. Besides wheat, other vegetables also are processed into flours and starches from which pastes can be made, such as

potato starch Potato starch is starch extracted from potatoes. The cells of the root tubers of the potato plant contain leucoplasts (starch grains). To extract the starch, the potatoes are crushed, and the starch grains are released from the destroyed cells. Th ...

: characteristics, such as strength and reversibility, vary with the plant species; manufacturer's processing; and the recipe of the end-user.

Uses

A common use is to make chains of paper rings, often from colored

construction paper Construction paper, also known as sugar paper, is coloured cardstock paper. The texture is slightly rough, and the surface is unfinished. Due to the source material, mainly wood pulp, small particles are visible on the paper's surface. It is u ...

. It can also be used to create

. In the

fine arts In European academic traditions, fine art (or, fine arts) is made primarily for aesthetics or creativity, creative expression, distinguishing it from popular art, decorative art or applied art, which also either serve some practical function ...

, wheat starch paste is often used in preparation and presentation. A good wheat starch paste has a strength compatible with many paper artifacts, remains reversible over time, is neither too acidic or alkaline, and is white.

Activists Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, direct or intervene in social, political, economic or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society toward a perceived common good. Forms of activism range from mandate build ...

and various

subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture, cultural society that differentiates itself from the values of the conservative, standard or dominant culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures ...

proponents often use this adhesive to flypost

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...

and artwork. It has also commonly been used by commercial bill posters since the nineteenth century. In particular, it was widely used by nineteenth and twentieth century

circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicy ...

bill posters, who developed a substantial culture around paste manufacture and postering campaigns. In the field of

alcohol Alcohol may refer to: Common uses * Alcohol (chemistry), a class of compounds * Ethanol, one of several alcohols, commonly known as alcohol in everyday life ** Alcohol (drug), intoxicant found in alcoholic beverages ** Alcoholic beverage, an alco ...

and

nightclub A nightclub or dance club is a club that is open at night, usually for drinking, dancing and other entertainment. Nightclubs often have a Bar (establishment), bar and discotheque (usually simply known as disco) with a dance floor, laser lighti ...

advertising, in the 1890s,

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Count, ''Comte'' Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901), known as Toulouse-Lautrec (), was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the colour ...

's posters were so popular that instructions were published on how to peel down the pasted posters without damage. Until the 1970s, commercial poster hangers always "cooked" their own paste, but since then many have bought pre-cooked instant pastes. It is applied to the backside of paper then placed on flat surfaces, particularly concrete and metal as it does not adhere well to wood or plastic. Cheap, rough paper such as

newsprint Newsprint is a low-cost, non-archival paper consisting mainly of wood pulp and most commonly used to print newspapers and other publications and advertising material. Invented in 1844 by Charles Fenerty of Nova Scotia, Canada, it usually has ...

, works well, as it can be briefly dipped in the mixture to saturate the fibres. When hanging unauthorized billboards or signage, to reduce the danger of being caught, wheatpasters frequently work in teams or

affinity group An affinity group is a group formed around a shared interest or common goal, to which individuals formally or informally belong. Affinity groups are generally precluded from being under the aegis of any governmental agency, and their purposes ...

s. In the United States and Canada, this process is typically called "wheatpasting" or "poster bombing", even when using commercial wallpaper paste instead of traditional wheat paste. In the United Kingdom, commercial wheatpasting is called

flyposting Flyposting (also known as bill posting) is a guerrilla marketing tactic where advertising posters (also known as flyers) are put up. In the United States, these posters are also commonly referred to as wheatpaste posters because wheatpaste i ...

and wheatpasting associated with urban art is called

paste up Paste up is a method of creating or laying out publication pages that predates the use of the now-standard computerized page design desktop publishing programs. Completed, or camera-ready, pages are known as mechanicals or mechanical art. In th ...

References

{{Use dmy dates, date=October 2020 Adhesives Visual arts materials Graffiti and unauthorised signage

Types

Uses

See also

References