About
I met Hanji
In 2000 winter, I was looking for a Christmas present on the Insadong street in Korea. I was alone and it was so cold. And I entered a shop like an obsessed moth by fire because I saw something looked very warm. The shop was filled with full of warm and soft lights. I felt so comfortable there and started to wonder if I had fallen into a fantasy world.
After a while I realized that I was actually in a Hanji lamp shop.
Since that day, I am in love with Hanji lamps.
What is Hanji?
Hanji means Korean paper. Korean started to make paper with inside bark of paper mulberry since 7th century. It is much stronger than the other papers so the oldest book made of Hanji is even 1000 years old but he still keeps most of his shape perfectly.
Thanks to this solidity, they used it not only for the books and the paintings but for the lamps, life products and furniture.
And also they used it as a window before introducing the glass window in Korea because it have higher light transmittance than the other papers and it offers the comfortable light for human eye.
Environment and Hanji
The Hanji objects were almost disappeared with modernization of Korea. But they became popular again nowadays because people have started to look for environmental friendly materials.
Hanji is 100% natural material and most of them are still made artisanally. So it doesn’t bring pollution during the manufacturing process. And we glue Hanji with flour paste on the recycled paperboard framework. (In old days, they used to stick a lot of layer of Hanji to get right thickness. But it has replaced by recycled paperboard now.) When the paperboard meets the couple of layer of Hanji, it becomes very solid, almost like wood. Paper returns to wood ;)
Well, but actually, we can use most of material as framework to do Hanji craft at home. Metal can, coconut shells, boxes, toilet paper rolls and even newspapers. You can transform all kind of useless items into practical house items or lovely presents.
When I was young, I couldn’t understand the beauty and the importance of the nature. I liked only being in the big cities and sough for the something very modern. But during my traveling in Australia, Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland, Thailand and etc, I face to the big nature. And I realized that everything is part of the nature even the cities and what I used to call the modern.
So Hanji craft is one of my ways to love the nature. I try to use recycled materials and to reflect the beauty of nature on it as much as I can.
Contact
If you are interested in Hanji craft, please contact me here.