Learning from Fumie Matsumoto

I had the good fortune to spend the day in Fumie Matsumoto’s papermaking studio. We went through all the steps of papermaking with kozo fiber, including pounding the kozo with a wooden mallet, adding neri with a cloth bag, stirring the paper slurry, and creating the layers of paper with the sugeta. 


Fumie has an interesting way of pressing the paper to drain out the water- she uses an old car jack- brilliant!


We dried the paper the traditional way, by mounting it on boards and drying it in the sun.  The paper came out with an embossed impression of the woodgrain and it was nicely bleached from the sun. 


In addition to papermaking, Fumie also taught me some washi paper arts including momigami (kneaded paper) and kyoseishi (strong paper), which is coated with konnyaku (Japanese yam) which strengthens and waterproofs the paper. I also learned how to repaper a shoji screen, which is not as difficult as I thought!


backside of shoji screen as the glue is drying

It was a wonderful day!

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