Lost traditional papermaking technique rediscovered in US

A traditional method of making the traditional paper Hanji that was thought to be lost has been rediscovered through materials found in the U.S.

The National Institute of Forest Science of the Korea Forest Service on May 27 said the method was recovered by analyzing traditional Hanji-making tools and performing research at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking in Atlanta, Georgia.

The analyzed tools were bal (deckle) and balteul (deckle frame). Dard Hunter, an American researcher of printing, paper and papermaking, described in his book that he collected the tools in 1933 from a Hanji-making atelier near Segeomjeong Pavilion in the present-day Sinyeong-dong neighborhood of Seoul's Jongno-gu District.

The think tank and Jo Hyun-jin Hanji Research Institute said analyses of paper and on-site research of artifacts showed that the tools were used for gadum ddeugi, an old method of making Hanji.

Balteul, made from pine trees, is 148 cm long and 72 cm wide, and bal, made from bamboo trees, is 125 cm long and 72 cm wide. The longitudinal upper and lower ends of bal are finished with wood 2 cm wide and 1.4 cm long.

The only widely known method to make Hanji in Korea was heullim ddeugi, which used fibers running down in every direction with water above the deckle without frames. The analysis of the tools and paper research found the specific working methods of two workers and Hanji-making principles for the first time.

Seo Jeong-weon, director of the forest institute's Forest Biomaterials Research Center, said, "The discovery of artifacts and manufacturing techniques that have disappeared in Korea through onsite research on relics is a meaningful achievement in the study of the history of traditional Korean paper."