A Different Way of Seeing

Along Maine's coast, a change in season can bring a change in harvest.

For generations, fishermen have made their living on the Atlantic, guided by an understanding of its waters that only experience can provide. Today, some of those same fishermen cultivate seaweed during the quieter months, drawing on knowledge earned over years of working at sea.

It was this evolving part of Maine's working waterfront that caught the attention of Sea Smoke's founder.

Seaweed had long been familiar, particularly as food. Yet watching a new industry take shape along the coast invited a different kind of curiosity. What other place might this remarkable resource have in people's lives?

At the same time, cannabis was finding a broader audience, bringing new attention to the products that accompany its enjoyment. Among them was the rolling paper, an established part of the experience whose possibilities extended beyond the materials traditionally used to make it.

There was an opportunity to bring these two realities together.

Sea Smoke was conceived as a new kind of rolling paper, one that would introduce Maine-grown seaweed into a product people already knew, creating another potential market for the people cultivating it.

The vision began on the coast, but the craft that would give it form was found elsewhere in Maine.

In Maine, papermaking is also an art. Within small studios, makers devote years to understanding the character of fibers and the possibilities of a handmade sheet. It was among these artists that Sea Smoke found the knowledge and curiosity to explore seaweed in an entirely different form.

For many of the papermakers Sea Smoke encountered, seaweed was a material they had never worked with before. Their familiarity was with the craft itself, refined through years of studying fibers, experimenting with materials, and learning to recognize the qualities of a sheet through sight and touch.

In their hands, papermaking is an exercise in both precision and imagination. The weight of a sheet, its flexibility, its texture, and the way light passes through its surface are all part of a language understood through practice.

Seaweed offered these artists something new to explore.

With each sheet formed by hand, a material cultivated in the Atlantic found its way into a different creative tradition. The knowledge of those who work Maine's waters was meeting the knowledge of those who work with paper.

That connection remains at the heart of Sea Smoke.

What began as an idea for another use of Maine-grown seaweed has become an exploration of what an entirely new rolling paper can be, informed by the character of its material and the artistry behind its making.

The seaweed was always there. So was the craft.

Sea Smoke began by imagining what they could become together.