A little bit of Hanji nostalgia ......

I just came across this old photo of myself and two other hanji crafters taken in the year 2000 in my tiny apartment in Andong, South Korea. It must have been taken in the very early days of learning how to do Hanji and I'm ashamed to say I don't remember the other ladies' names but I do believe that one of them use to teach English at a local High School. I wonder if they're still doing Hanji ?

I remember those days fondly when my Korean friend and neighbor Monica first introduced a small group of us to Hanji and how do make different things out of cardboard and paper. If she wasn't sure of what to do herself she'd get on the phone to her sister who lived in Wonju and she'd always be able to help us out.

In my spare time I'd spend hours searching the backstreets of Andong and Pusan trying to find Hanji shops and different papers for a variety of projects. It was great to be able to wander into a shop and thumb through hundreds of different papers and I'd usually come home with many more than I needed because I just couldn't leave some of them in the shop. I also found some interesting places that had a large variety of Hanji hardware and it was great to be able to choose the right pieces for particular items.

Things have changed a lot since those early days of doing Hanji as I don't have assess to a lot of the hands on advice and an abundance of supplies that I once had but it's forced me to become more creative with my choices and grow in my understanding and production of my Hanji artwork. I wonder what the next 10 years will bring? I'm excited by the prospect .....

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Lotus symbol in Korean culture .....

In traditional Korean Hanji art you can see many different designs of plants, animals, letters and insects. I'm sure you've wondered what they all symbolise as they are repeated so often and in many different ways. In this post I just want to take a brief look at the lotus plant and what it symbolises for the Korean people. I've used this design on a few articles but I never really knew the full meaning of what it represented until I started doing some research for my book. Even though many of us aren't Korean we can still use these designs and in so doing, translate a deeper meaning to our articles. Here are a just a few of my favourites from the easiest to the more difficult to cut out. The lotus flower symbolises creation, birth, liveability and reproduction and therefore it's one of the most important symbols in both Korean culture and its traditional religions. In both Confucianism and Buddhism

The Buddhist symbol, Hanji & Korean culture ....

When selecting designs for my Hanji pieces I tend to make stylistic choices as to what will look best on each piece but the Korean designs all have very deep symbolic meanings. None more than the Buddhist swastika (manja) design. ‘Manja’ (만, Man is “卍” and 만자, Manja literally means “letter Man”) is also called Srivatsalksana in Sanskrit. It is one of the thirty-two (32) marks of excellence of the Buddha and is said to exist on his hands, feet, hair and waist. For those of us in the West this is often confused with the German Nazi swastika symbol but in fact it's been around for about three thousand years. The swastika is an equilateral cross with arms bent at right angles and all in the same direction, usually to the right, or clockwise. It's a symbol of prosperity and good fortune and it originally represented the revolving sun, fire, or life. The word swastika is derived from the Sanskrit swastika which means, "conducive to well

Online Hanji paper store, in English .....

I'm really pleased to be able to share with you this website where you can order a variety of Hanji papers from Korea and it's all in English !!! The store is based in Daejon, Korea. HAMINBRIDGE ( Thehanji ) was established by Moonyang Park in 1983. It's a family owned 2nd generation business and they have a factory in Junju. They also have a factory in China where some of the paper is made. The website is at www. thehanji.com and it provides a selection of specialty Hanji paper (Korean paper) and products. I ordered some papers from them recently to see what it was like and they were extremely efficient in dealing with the order and it was here in the UAE within 5 days so I was really impressed. The prices were good and they even have some on special, the paper is beautiful and the ease of ordering was amazing. They do sell rolls of paper, traditional papers and lanterns but overall I did think the range was a bit limited for what I wa

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