A bale of cotton, purchased from a broker at the California Cotton Cooperative, provides the raw material for the production of artisanal paper. Each day that the artist produces paper he records the price of cotton on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Once dry, the paper is weighed and assigned a value determined by its weight, date of manufacture, and the market price of its material on that date. This information is printed without ink on the face of the sheet using a letterpress and a custom type set designed for the stock listings of the Wall Street Journal. A legal clause printed at the bottom of each sheet states “The bearer of this piece of paper agrees to sell it at the weight adjusted price of cotton on the date of sale.”