Making mulberry paper to restore ancient calligraphy and paintings
2024-08-26
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Wang Bolin from Yuexi County, Anhui Province, adheres to and inherits the ancient papermaking technique——
Making mulberry paper to restore ancient calligraphy and paintings
The picture shows Wang Bailin fishing for paper.
Photo by Chen Ruotian
Pick up the brush and dip it in the paste, moisten the paper backing little by little, and then stick it on the cleaned painting core, then brush it flat and drain the moisture... Just after 8 o'clock in the morning, Yuan Weixiang, a senior ancient painting restorer in Anqing City, Anhui Province, has started his day's work.
Recently, he is leading a team to restore an ancient painting from the Qing Dynasty. "The paper support may seem simple, but it is an essential part of the restoration of ancient calligraphy and paintings." Yuan Weixiang said that the paper support is also called "life paper" in the industry and is crucial to extending the life of ancient calligraphy and paintings. When encountering problems related to the paper support, Yuan Weixiang will go to Wang Bolin, who makes mulberry paper in Yuexi County, Anqing City.
About half an hour's drive east from Yuexi County, you will arrive at Banshe Village, Maojianshan Township. Continue up along the winding mountain road, and soon you will see a papermaking workshop consisting of several old brick houses.
In the workshop, Wang Bolin skillfully fixed the paper curtain on the curtain frame, then lifted it up and gently shook it in the pool. As the pulp water flowed out from the upper and lower ends of the curtain frame, the fine pulp settled and condensed on the paper curtain, and a piece of thin paper was formed.
What Wang Bolin makes is mulberry paper. This kind of paper is soft, insect-proof, strong in tension, non-fading, and highly absorbent. It is high-grade paper for calligraphy and painting and mounting, and is widely used in packaging, umbrella making, fan making and other fields.
Wang Bolin is 59 years old this year. His family has been making paper for generations, and he is the seventh generation. He has been learning from his father since he was young, and started to participate in making mulberry paper at the age of 14. "A piece of mulberry paper has to go through more than 20 processes from preparing materials to making paper." Wang Bolin kept his hands busy, while scooping paper and introducing it to reporters. Mulberry paper is produced entirely by hand. First, the mulberry bark is peeled, dried, and soaked in a pool for several days. Then, it is kneaded by hand to soften the bark, and then it is slurried with lime water. After two steaming, multiple rinsing and manual impurity removal, the pulp is put into the paper trough after beating, and then the paper is scooped with a curtain rack. Finally, the paper is dried and cut, and the whole process is completed.
Wang Bolin said that every process of making mulberry paper is very particular. For example, the mulberry bark used for papermaking should be collected after the Waking of Insects and before the Tomb-Sweeping Day every year, and the water used in the paper trough should preferably be local deep well water. In Wang Bolin's opinion, the most technically difficult and most critical part is to fish out the paper.
"The quality, thickness, texture and silk threads of paper all depend on this 'scooping'." Wang Bailin said that the action of scooping paper may seem simple, but "without three to five years of practice, it is difficult to get it right."
Yuexi has a tradition of hand-made mulberry paper. However, as time passed, the art of making mulberry paper was on the verge of being lost. By the 1980s, there were not many people making mulberry paper in the village. The revival of mulberry paper can be traced back to the start of the major renovation of the Palace Museum in Beijing in 2002.
In the northeast corner of the Palace Museum is a Juanqinzhai, which contains a panoramic painting covering an area of more than 170 square meters. The mounting paper on the back of the painting is mulberry paper. In 2002, the Palace Museum started a major renovation, and the restoration of the Juanqinzhai panoramic painting was an important project. In order to restore the original appearance of the painting as much as possible, it was necessary to find suitable mulberry paper.
Wang Bolin still has a newspaper from September 14, 2004, from which he learned that the Palace Museum came to Anhui to urgently collect mulberry paper to repair the landscape painting. Upon seeing this news, he immediately set off and went to Beijing with the mulberry paper produced by his family.
The first time I recommended myself, it was not smooth. "The expert took my paper, checked it repeatedly in his hand, and it broke after a few pulls," Wang Bolin recalled. Although a little frustrated, he did not give up, but carefully observed a palm-sized sample paper shown by the experts of the Palace Museum.
He carefully studied the weight, thickness, tensile strength, and folding resistance of the sample paper, analyzed the materials and fiber length, and then conducted experiments again and again. Finally, one day, Wang Bolin felt that the mulberry paper he produced was almost the same as the sample paper, so he went to Beijing again.
"After testing by the National Paper Quality Supervision and Inspection Center, the only thing that failed to meet the standard was the folding resistance of the paper I made." Wang Bolin believes from experience that more effort is needed in the steaming process. "The firepower, time, and temperature must all be controlled. If the firepower is not high enough when steaming the raw materials, the paper will become woody."
He began to conduct repeated experiments, and finally increased the steaming time from 15 hours to more than 20 hours. The third test data showed that the mulberry paper he produced had a folding resistance of more than 9,000 times, which is twice that of the paper used in RMB. Finally, the Cultural Heritage and Technology Department of the Palace Museum decided to use the mulberry paper he produced to restore the Juanqinzhai Tongjing painting.
Providing materials to the Forbidden City has brought the mulberry paper making process back into people's view. In June 2008, the handmade mulberry paper making technique was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists, and Wang Bolin became the representative inheritor of this project. In 2010, the restoration project of the Summer Palace started, and Wang Bolin received another production order. So far, he has delivered more than 600,000 sheets of mulberry paper to the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace.
"Our ancestors passed down the craft to my generation, so we must do it well and keep it well." Wang Bolin said that now his biggest wish is to let more young people participate in learning how to make mulberry paper. "Every summer vacation, many college students come here to experience making mulberry paper. I teach them in person, hoping that young people can understand and pay attention to mulberry paper and pass on this craft." (Li Junjie)
Source: People's Daily
