Hanji Happenings

Jean Pierre Gouy, Le artisan papetier .  I love the sound of this title which simply means, 'the artisan paper or the paper artist'. Jean Pierre has been making paper for almost 40 years now, in fact he started in 1977. He works alone in his home studio on a small farm situated in Les Bordes commune, near Saint-Clement in North Central France.  On Day 2 of our paper tour in France our bus wound its way along the tiny back roads with the ever vigilant Chantall, our tour guide, asking directions at every turn until we found his residence nestled in the rolling green hills of the beautiful French countryside. Jean Pierre Gouy Jean Pierre's business goes under the name of Les Papiers du Mou lin {The papers of the mill) and we were fortunate enough to visit La Maison du papier et de l'imprimerie (The paper and printing house) situated in a few of his well equipped farm sheds. Shaking the frame filled with fibres to extract the water This a...

I've recently acquired some different thicknesses of Hanji (paper), cotton and banana, string.  These I'll use on different projects over the next few months as I experiment with some new designs and more contemporary Hanji pieces. I bought the large reels of Hanji string in Seoul during my visit last year and used it to add to this Hanji lamp I made during one of my classes at Jonginamoo and I love it but, I can see so many more possibilities. The cotton string on my shelf I've been using to tiepieces of wire together for forming a shape and before covering it with Hanji. This gorgeous banana string I found in a shop in Melbourne and just had to have it.  The fibres are extremely soft, I'm not sure what process it has gone through but, I'm sure it can be used on a new project !!