Sold out: ONLINE HANDMADE PAPER WORKSHOP WITH ABDUL SALIM

About the artist:

Abdul Salim Ji is a Natural dye handmade paper maker artist from Sanganer, Jaipur, Rajasthan. He has been creating exquisite handmade paper for the last 25 years and was taught this beautiful craft by a master artist in the craft. He was honored with the State level Award in 2001 for his work.

The traditional process of making handmade paper involves several stages including shredding/chopping, beating, pressing, drying and cutting rags. The collected raw material is first bleached as to remove color and whiten the hosiery cloth. The bleached cloth is finely chopped into small pieces. Then the waste paper and the cloth pieces are mixed together with water in a beater. The beater machine finely beats the raw material to make the pulp. The pulp is evenly poured in a mold which contains two frames. The screen holds the pulp and the water drains out. The wet pulp is transferred onto a cloth and pressed to make the thick sheet. This process is repeated until the required uniformity is achieved. The sheets are dried after squeezing the water. The thickness of the sheet depends on the quantity of pulp taken in the mold. For the colored sheets, the dye stuff is added in the pulp during the beating process. Some papers are colored externally after the paper is dried. Motifs are created by adding flower petals, leaf and grass during the pressing process. The dried papers are inspected for quality and then smoothened.