I've been haunted by this wonderfull Irving Penn print I saw a couple of years ago of Jean Cocteau, Paris 1949. I just couldn't get over the texture of the print and it's incredible surface. There were little tiny luminous fibers sticking up with all over like a cotton surface of some sort. Really incredible.

I'm just curious if anyone knows what type of paper he used and if it was cotton or something else. I recall a large book some time ago with collages of his test strips and lots of notes on his process, materials and experiments. Anyone know?

I've been haunted by this wonderfull Irving Penn print I saw a couple of years ago of Jean Cocteau, Paris 1949. I just couldn't get over the texture of the print and it's incredible surface. There were little tiny luminous fibers sticking up with all over like a cotton surface of some sort. Really incredible.

I'm just curious if anyone knows what type of paper he used and if it was cotton or something else. I recall a large book some time ago with collages of his test strips and lots of notes on his process, materials and experiments. Anyone know?

I believe the book you're referring to is Irving Penn: A Career in Photography http://www.amazon.com/Irving-Penn-Photography-Colin-Westerbeck/dp/082122459X
As for the paper, I think the platinum prints were always printed on Rives.

The book Irving Penn (Platinum Prints) gives all the details of most of his famous prints at the back of the book, from what i recall he used many different papers and did not just stick to one.

"Irving Penn, Platinum Prints" was published in 2005. 191 pages. Plate number 10 is entitled "Jean Cocteau, 1948." According to the "Checklist of the Exhibition", pp. 171-6, plate 10 is a "platinum/palladium print on Bienfang mounted on aluminum, 1986." The text of the book states that Penn used muliple coats of platinum/palladium to make one image and that he often mounted the paper to the aluminum support before coating. He varied the mixture of pt to pl for each image.

Hope that helps,

Allen