Xuan paper mill, Jingxian county, Anhui province 2012
Anhui province is the birthplace of the traditional Chinese paper dating back more than 1,500 years. The materials used for producing Xuan paper are unique. They include the bark of Blue Sandalwood trees native to China, rice husks, straw and spring waters. The production of the paper includes 108 steps altogether, most of which are kept secret.
Blue Sandalwood tree
Foreground: the guides, and an ancient device for beating fibers, Behind the wall; a pile of grey rice husks and behind them a pile of straw.
The fibers are stripped from the inner bark of the blue sandalwood tree, then bundled up and left to bleach in the sun for over a year, amongst the ancestral graves.
After the bleaching, the fibers are carefully sorted.
The assorted fibers on the left are beaten together with straw, on the right beaten rice husks
The beaten tree fibers, straw and rice husks are gradually combined together and flattened
Piles of the flattened surfaces
Systematic slicing of the flattened surfaces
Beating the sliced pieces into pulp by foot in a vessel which has a water source at the bottom
The pulp is put into a woven bamboo basket and washed in a pool of spring water
Weaving the mould (screen) from bamboo fiber. The traditional Chinese screen for paper making is composed of a supporting frame and the assembled weaved mould.
Woven mould with a dragon shaped water mark
A woven basket with the pulp is hung on one side as to drain consistently into the large granite tub ensuring a constant ration between water and the pulped fiber, the mixture from which the paper is made. The two papermakers dip the large mould into the tub in unison in wave like motions which creates a thin wet sheet of paper.
The woven mould with the wet sheet is taken off the frame and placed over a pile of newly made sheets of paper.
The woven mould is then peeled off.
A stack of wet paper ready for drying
Each sheet of paper is peeled from the stack and brushed on a heated wall. When the paper is dry it is peeled off the wall and is ready for inspection
Checking the quality of the paper and packaging the paper
In Chinese tradition there are 'Four Treasures of the Study', an expression used to denote the brush, ink paper and ink stone used in Chinese calligraphy. Each 'treasure' has its' unique form, and is produced in certain area of China as a speciality for the scholars.
The Xuan ink is made from granite extracted from Huangshan, The Sacred Yellow Mountains
A variety of ink vessels made of granite and an assortment of brushes
The calligrapher