Thursday, March 18, 2010
Washi
Three years ago, I visited The Paper Place in downtown Toronto. It's chock full of wonderful papers for artists to use in their work, along with beautiful decorative sheets for use in scrapbooking, invitations, etc. At the AFAC conference this March I had the good fortune to meet Nancy Jacobi, the owner of The Paper Place. Her presentation included a slideshow of the history of handmade Japanese paper, and the story of how she became involved with bringing these gorgeous papers, and their makers, to Toronto. The retail store has now been sold, and is called the Japanese Paper Place, while Nancy and her husband run the warehouse, supplying their former store and other art supply stores with handmade Japanese papers, or Washi, as I believe they are called. We learned about Gampi and Kozo, and the careful, labour-intensive process of producing them. I can't wait to work with some of the samples that Nancy generously gave to us. Some of the artwork on Japanese paper is shown below in the photos.
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2 comments:
Hello. I just got alerted to your kind Blog post about my talk on Washi at the AFAC conference. Thank you! May I point out a correction needed about The Japanese Paper Place? We exist now mainly as a wholesaler of Japanese paper to resellers around the world. One of our customers is The Paper Place on Queen Street at our former location, which is now independently owned by Heather Sauer.
Thanks for airing this, and HAVE FUN with washi!
Nancy, it's so good to hear from you. It's a mystery to me how you were alerted, but I'm so happy you were. Thanks for setting the record straight - you've explained the situation so much better than I did. Sorry if I confused things, but so glad you came on board. I've also posted a photo of you on my Facebook Fan Page: Barbara Chappelle - Abstract Paintings. I have used washi as an element in my mixed media abstract paintings, and plan on adding it to my oil/cold wax work. Another exciting adventure.
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