Drawing : Paper: Folding and the songs of trees

Papermaking in Echizen

David Haskell in his wonderful book ‘The Songs of Trees’ has a chapter on Japanese paper making in Echizen. He points out that in Japanese the word for deity ‘kami’ 神 is the same sound as the word for paper ‘kami’ 紙, of course the Japanese character for each is different. When Haskell arrived in Echizen, because of the similarity his taxi driver wasn’t sure whether he wanted to be dropped off at a shrine or a papermaking facility. This caused Haskell to reflect that both shrines and papermaking are centred around water and the fact that a spiritual understanding of both paper and its manufacture was essential to the continuation of papermaking as a craft.

Echizen paper's stamp of authenticity, the goddess Kawakami Gozen

The Okamoto Otaki Shrine in Echizen is home to the goddess of paper, Kawakami Gozen, which translates as “The Goddess who lives above the stream”. The village of Echizen has around 40 studios that make Washi or Japanese handmade paper. The manufacturing process is a long and intricate one that is undertaken in the cold weather of winter in order to ensure that the pure, cold running water can inhibit the production of bacteria and prevent the decomposition of fibres. The cold also makes the fibres contract, producing a much crisper feel to the paper.

Haskell writes beautifully about his experience and rather than try and paraphrase his writing I will quote one section in full;

“In a bath of mashed inner bark of kozo or mitsumata trees, water floats the plant cells’ dissociated strands, buoying them as they drift. Each molecule of cellulose is a strand of sugars, up to fifteen thousand links in the chain. Suspended in a haze of water and hibiscus mucilage, they crosshatch and weave. Coldwater forestalls fermentation and makes a viscous suspension, yielding the finest papers. The foothills of Echizen might not be able to grow much food, but Kawakami Gozen brought a craft suited to the mountains. Even the trees here grow longer fibres than those of the warmer valleys, giving paper strength and luster. Echizen became the hub of papermaking in Japan. The town was the exclusive supplier for aristocrats, shogunates, and governments. From these vats of water and fibre, Japan crafted its written culture. Later as trade with the west commenced, the paper travelled to Europe, where papermaking methods were one thousand years behind those from Asia. Rembrandt preferred Japanese paper, likely from Echizen for his etchings.

A scoop into the bath with a fine screen captures the maze of cellulose, locking the tangle as the sheet flattens. Repeated dips laminate the paper’s surface. Water’s capillary bonds, the same bonds that hold water within living plant cells, suck and mat the plant strands. Crushed by a press, water seeps out of the paper. The sodden sheet tightens as it oozes and drips. Finally the departing water draws the cellulose close enough that plant atoms find one another and bind, atom to atom.”

Near the end of Haskell’s article he begins to remark on the importance of sound as an indicator of a paper’s quality. Again I quote from him;

“Forged banknotes have a different timbre from real money. Criminals seldom find the right mix of plant species and water. The banker and printer hear the age and provenance of money in crack or slur, their fingers massaging sound from paper. A connoisseur of cash hears paper’s origin.” (Haskell, 2017, p. 102)

Japanese paper money is printed on a paper made from pulped mitsumata bark and abaca leaf fibre, American dollars are printed on paper made from rough cotton and linen rags; the new British paper money is printed on synthetic polymer instead of paper. When you fold money and put it in your pocket you will feel it and hear it, technological change and cultural association coming together in a moment of audio and tactile meaning. This could be one of those starting points from which a body of work could grow.

Why not spend a day listening to your finger tracing its way over different papers? If you have access to a contact microphone why not record the sounds different papers make when you draw on them, or when you fold them? How would you compose these sound stories? Has anyone written the tragic opera of the folded banknote?

As with all my posts on materials, what is important is that by focusing for a while on anything, by stopping to research what lies beneath appearances, new avenues for practice should become apparent. Paper's story is biological, chemical, socio-cultural, phenomenological, historical, geographical, technological and personal. Usually thought of as a support for drawing, paper is much more than that, it has wonderful physical and metaphorical possibilities and a rich set of associated stories that cross many cultures. For instance the Glasgow based artist Karla Black uses a very particular sub-set of papers, cellophanes and tissues, touching upon a certain series of associations we have with bathroom textures, scents and colours; by owning this particular 'territory' she is able to construct a distinct body of work, this year showing in the Venice Biennale as Scotland's representative.

Karla Black

Sipho Mabona works using origami techniques, techniques that begin to become interesting when you push them to an extreme. The fold is an important aspect of paper, you could argue that folding is in effect paper's own internal drawing method, folding reveals a paper's geometry, the lines of folds made reveal the internal dynamics of possibilities. We fold a banknote as we put it into our pocket, or carefully fold that note on a slip of paper given to us by a secret friend and slip it into a wallet, both activities of the everyday. As artists we can look at those things we do everyday and in them find the wonder and magic of life.

Sipho Mabona at work

T. Sundara Row's Geometric exercises in paper folding is the classic text on paper folding and is itself a wonderful example of how by focusing on one idea a whole field of possibilities open out. In this case the relationship between folding and photographic documentation is also really interesting*.