Traditional Chinese papermaking today

As noted elsewhere, paper in China was not only the basis of the arts of painting and calligraphy: its manufacture was also regarded as an art form in its own right. This applied above all to the famous Xuan paper, practiced in China since the eighth century CE and now listed by UNESCO as part of the intangible heritage of humankind. The reverence for this process of production is reflected in the tone of the video below, which provides both an account of the technical process involved in this form of papermaking and some sense of its importance to Chinese culture over more than a thousand years. A few of the 108 steps in the traditional manufacture of this paper are illustrated in the images above.

Credit: Howard Hotson (April 2019)