Japanese Papermaking

Today was the 2nd day of the Japanese papermaking class I am teaching at a local high school in Dayton. The group is mostly Ohio educators who take classes sponsored by the Dayton Art Institute during summer months each year. Being that most of them are art teachers, they are very creative and responsive to what I had to teach them about the paper process. A lot of them would like to do papermaking with their students, as well as personally becoming more involved with their own art.

Yesterday we spent the morning doing introductions and becoming familiar with supplies, tools and equipment for western papermaking. They were introduced to cotton rag, unbleached abaca, kozo, pigments, retention aid and formation aid and then we spent the day doing both western and eastern papermaking. Making paper from abaca was an introduction to Japanese papermaking because of adding the formation aid to the fiber.

After cooking the kozo yesterday during class, the first thing we did in the morning was rinse, clean and hand beat the fiber in preparation for the Japanese method. I introduced them to the sugeta (su=screen and geta=the mould). In the late 80's while in Japan I purchased a beautiful sugeta made from mahogany with the su made from bamboo splints and silk threads. In 1989 I paid $500 for this beautiful tool.

This afternoon we talked about several books that I love: Washi: the World of Japanese Paper by Sukey Hughes, Plants for Papermaking by Helen Hulbert, Japanese Papermaking by Timothy Barrett, one book called Paper with pictures of different artists and their art pieces. I showed them the only magazine for papermakers in the U.S. called Hand Papermaking. We talked about printing on kozo with an ink jet printer, a book cover made from iris leaves, and shifu which is hand spun paper. I had samples of this and how the process is done plus 2 yards of beautiful fabric where paper is the weft when it was on the loom. At that time in Japan I had taken a 3-day workshop in a Japanese artist's home. I will download some pictures from the class today soon.

I asked my granddaughter, Erin, if she would like to read a story to the class this morning. The story reading came about after I had a short discussion with a participant yesterday about a student of hers that died from an accident recently. It was evident to me how this teacher cared deeply for him, as I watched the tears flow from her eyes. She had tried to help him on a project he wanted to do for his mother and there was a lot of difficulty in what he wanted to achieve, so it was never brought to fruition. No matter what happened, I believe this teacher helped him more than what she realizes because of her caring and commitment not just for him, but for all her students. It made me think of a wonderful book titled The Dot by Reynolds. Erin read the child's story to the class of teachers and I shared that we, especially who are teachers, leave impressions on our students that we may never realize in this lifetime. I wanted, especially for this class participant, to believe she had an impact on this individual. I suggested she might make a ceramic piece in honor of him and present it to his mother. Their project may not have turned out, but I believe she gave more to him than she is aware. She helped him make his 'Dot' in life. I asked that she keep me posted in the continuation of this story.