Discussions surrounding diversity, inclusion, bias, and racism have been surfacing in many professional spheres over the past few years including conservation and hand papermaking. Terminology and language have been one area that is gaining attention. In this climate, as hand papermakers and paper conservators, we find ourselves in a moment that requires us to pause and reflect on some of the reasons that certain language developed around our craft/profession and continues to be used ubiquitously.
To start with a simple example, words such as “laid” and “chain” are used to describe the linear pattern imparted on the paper from a European laid mould. Those same terms are often used to describe the pattern from flexible screen surfaces, which were developed much earlier than the European mould. Why then do we impose these and other terms onto tools and traditions that have their own culturally relevant descriptors that we in the field don’t even know offhand?
As papermaker (Radha) and paper conservator (Aisha), we first started talking about these issues when we met in 2017 during Radha’s Indo-Islamicate papermaking workshop at the University of Michigan. Prompted by Aisha’s involvement in a recent project at Stanford University Libraries to re-evaluate conservation terminology and language, we arranged to revive our discussions. What follows is a snapshot of our conversation, which took place on November 24, 2020. Radha was in Sweden and Aisha was in California.
radha pandey (rp): An argument for the generalized use of terms like “laid” and “wove” is that they are in fact accurate. The woven threads of a flexible mould are similar to the woven wires of a European mould, and the bamboo or grass splints are similar to the laid wires held in place. One could also argue that these terms behave as a shorthand and that it is simply easier to use them as generalized terms.1 But this generalized grouping of terms doesn’t foster a deeper understanding or respect for a culture or tradition. As an example, the five papermaking villages seen in Elaine Koretysky’s documentary Origin of Paper in China2 are a testament to the fact of how little we prioritize this in our education and conversation.3 Referred to as Chinese papermaking, these styles could have different local terminology better suited to describe the tradition and create differentiation.4
aisha wahab (aw): Similar debates are present in the conservation profession surrounding language and terminology in relation to accuracy and/or convenience. Shorthand terms provide convenience and speed in documentation, particularly in non-narrative condition report forms. Checking a “non-Western paper” or even an “Asian paper” box on a documentation form can be general enough that it could encompass paper made using a Japanese papermaking technique with fibers from Thailand. But much information is lost by way of convenience including recognition of the polylithic nature of the world’s papermaking traditions. For that reason, many conservators prefer longer narratives that allow for the nuances of each paper item we treat, with some conservators preferring to only document visual and other sensory observations without geographic or other qualitative conclusions.5
rp: This makes me think of the shorthand term “Japanese papermaking” that is often used to denote nagashizuki, the style of sheet formation most associated with Japanese paper. Nagashizuki describes the action of the papermaker moving the slurry back and forth across the screen surface and tossing any excess off the screen to finish the sheet. This specific style of papermaking needs no other shorthand; we should refer to it as nagashizuki. And the language itself serves as a geographic and cultural identifier. I have also heard people refer to the Japanese papermaking equipment—sugeta—as “Japanese mould and deckle” instead of what it really is, a flexible screen and frame. I understand the ease of the comparative language but I think we should be taking more time to examine and make space for other traditions and words used to describe them.
aw: Many terms and definitions used by conservators originate from a European–North American framework. For example, the terms “laid” and “wove” to distinguish between paper types are well suited for European papers, however, don’t encompass papers produced using both a woven fabric and grass/reed mould, including some Japanese and Islamicate papers.
Additionally, many conservation-specific terminology resource guides currently don’t encompass materials and techniques outside Europe and North America. For example, if we examine two reference guides commonly used by paper conservators, The Print Council of America Paper Sample Book: A Practical Guide to the Description of Paper,6 and The Descriptive Terminology for Works of Art on Paper: Guidelines for the Accurate and Consistent Description of the Materials and Techniques of Drawings, Prints, and Collages,7 the focus of both guides is primarily on Euro-North American materials and techniques. The latter even states in its preface that it “focuses on art on paper in the Western tradition.” The Print Council of America Paper Sample Book is a booklet of paper samples to be used as a reference set for paper color, texture, and weight. Out of the 26 samples, 24 papers are from North America or Europe, with only 2 from Japan. Both of these guides have been used by conservators as a base reference for the description of materials and techniques for works from around the world. But what happens when we use primarily one material cultural practice as a baseline to look at all other practices? Does it affect our ability to look at papers from various cultures in an equally nuanced unbiased way?
rp: Another timely and relevant terminology issue worth mentioning is the use of the term “Islamic” as it relates to hand papermaking. This is especially important when talking about the history of papermaking and the long period of its development in Central Asia. Because of its geographical location, many refer to it as “Samarkandi paper,” but also as “Islamic,” “Arab,” “Muslim,” or “Islamic World paper.” These four terms for me personally hold heavy biases. We wouldn’t necessarily term European papers as Christian or Jesuit papers. This kind of classification would seem narrow, biased, and perhaps even incorrect. Wouldn’t it therefore be considerate and correct to try and classify according to style as it relates to place, culture, or tools? For example the term “Indo-Islamicate papermaking” encompasses the cultural influence of Islam, and the addition of “Indo–” gives contextual information about that culture. Let us bear in mind that the culture of Islam includes a wide geographical range.8 How then, can we check a box that says “Islamic” or “Arabic”?
However, we can research and conclude that the Muslim rulers in India influenced the culture, art, and craft traditions and introduced many advancements including paper. One could argue that it would be only fair to give credit to this influence by including it in the terminology, instead of trying to neutralize it. It is difficult to isolate the tradition into “Indian papermaking” because today, this means something else entirely.9
aw: While I also have been pondering over the use and appropriateness of these terms I have not arrived at a formal conclusion. As a self-identifying Muslim I feel a personal connection to this debate and equally frustrated with the options. While “Islamic paper” is a convenient shorthand, its use is complicated when used with secular objects like paper, and can evoke a monolithic context as opposed to the multiculturalism of a vast region over centuries.
In regards to using the terms “Arab paper,” “Muslim paper,” or “Islamic World paper” to cover the entirety of Muslim-majority or Muslim-ruled regions, I take issue with the first two terms. Referring to paper as “Arab” is a stereotype-driven misnomer that equates the Islamic world to the Arab world. However the term is appropriate if describing a distinct papermaking style from Arab-dominate regions. The term “Muslim paper” is also a fallacy as the regions we are discussing encompass a myriad of religions10 and both makers and users of paper were not exclusive to Muslims.
My current preference for existing terms are “Islamic World paper,” “Muslim World paper,” and “Islamicate paper,” and when greater specificity is possible, terms such as “Indo-Islamicate” or “Persianate.” The terms don’t use Islam/Muslim as an adjective for paper, thereby removing religious connotation to a secular material, but at the same time still giving ownership to the cultural world developed by Muslim-majority or Muslim-ruled areas. I worry that in finding an alternative term with no direct link to the Muslim narrative we would be doing a disservice to the cultural achievements and contributions of these regions in which culture is inextricably linked to the Muslim Ummah11 and/or the Muslim rulers of these areas.
To better understand the language both papermakers and paper conservators are using, we need to ask how our language developed and how it has been sustained. Much of our professional language has been inherited and reinforced in our educational experiences.
rp: I agree, unfortunately both fields entered an academic space dominated by Western knowledge and practitioners and it is perhaps their point of view that informs how the rest of the field receives, understands, and imparts the information.
In my opinion, there is not enough conversation within the papermaking field regarding racism, Eurocentrism, and our biases.
Some of the readings at my program were written in the early to mid-1900s by white men. We must remember that while papermaking technology doesn’t necessarily change a great deal, our perceptions certainly do. We are still learning to be more considerate as a society. Recognizing and dismantling Eurocentricity and racism within our field is an important step in that direction. In Aztec and Maya Papermakers (1944) by Victor Wolfgang von Hagen, there is an introduction by Dard Hunter in which Hunter writes:
“For many years, while occupied with investigations into ancient and modern papermaking in Asia and Europe, I have been mindful of the desirability of an authoritative history of primitive papermaking in the early civilizations lying south of the United States. Almost forty years ago it was my unique privilege to live among the Otomi Indians in the village of Cholula, Municipality of Tianguistengo, District Zacualtipan, Hidalgo, Mexico; and there I had the rare opportunity of watching these primitive workers facticate their coarse, broadformed paper which, after being dried in the sun, was cut into grotesque images for use in religious rites.”12
Hagen continues, the very first sentence reading: “This is the story of primitive American papermaking and its place in the Aztec and Maya civilizations.”
Writings like these shape perceptions and inform opinions. It has never been more important to be critical of source material, and do the work to create it anew using current research.13 There is material available today, but unfortunately still limited, that offers an updated, unbiased, and critical representation of the history of papermaking.
Alongside Hunter’s tome, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft, had I also read A Life of Ts’ai Lung and Japanese Paper-Making by Kiyofusa Narita,14 I may have looked at Hunter’s research more critically. In his book, Narita comments on Hunter’s writing about watermarked paper in Japan: “In his book, Mr. Hunter, whether due to his insufficient investigation or ignorance, does not touch upon the watermarked paper in Japan. There is not reason for thinking that watermarked paper cannot be produced by the application of the bamboo screens.”15
In the same vein, is Jesper Trier’s Ancient Paper of Nepal.16 Although well-researched, the book was written in 1972 by a white European. On the other hand, Masatoshi A. Konishi’s Hāth-Kāghaz: History of Handmade Paper in South Asia, published in 2013, covers papermaking in Nepal, India, Bhutan, Burma, Tibet, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.17 Although his research spanned decades,18 it is still more recent and presents the “current” state of papermaking in a lesser-researched area of the world, by a non-white researcher aiming to fill in the severe gaps in our knowledge (and curriculum). This book was an accidental discovery for me.
aw: Similarly one of my first introductions to the world’s various papermaking traditions was through the Orientalist perspectives of Dard Hunter. Additionally, conservation education in the US has also been traditionally heavily focused on Euro-North American materials and techniques. However, the introduction of Japanese papers as repair materials has added an emphasis on Japanese materials and techniques to paper conservation. For example, my education of the world’s papermaking traditions focused on Euro-North American and Japanese traditions, with a brief mention of China’s contribution to the world with the invention of papermaking and the Islamic world’s contribution to European papermaking. However as a paper conservator I wish I had a fuller scope of paper history, its global presence, and the diversity of the craft as a whole.
Anecdotally, as a student interested in book structures from the Islamic world, I was taught early in my training that books from the Islamic world were inherently “weak” due to the use of “weak” materials including silk thread and thinly pared leather. I remember feeling uncomfortable with the terminology being used to describe centuries of a cultural group’s craft and one I felt a deep connection to. The term “weak” passed a judgement of inferiority on the structures and lack of sophisticated knowledge on the makers. The language being used reinforced a Euro-centric bias to viewing book structures, one in which book materials and techniques are compared to a European standard in every way from how they were made, used, and the mindset of the makers and users. While these were some of my early experiences, I have also witnessed a shift towards a consciousness of harmful language as well as a growing sensitivity towards our professions’ Euro-centric biases. It continues to remain imperative that we are vigilantly aware of the language we use in our profession and cognizant of comparisons whether consciously or unconsciously of various cultures’ material and techniques.
How can we progressively move forward and what questions should we be asking? In regards to education within our fields, we both feel strongly that we need to continue to advance our graduate programs by placing greater emphasis on a broader range of papermaking traditions. Additionally, we should be looking to diversify knowledge in our professional positions beyond the most-known and practiced craft traditions. It is essential to allow experts to advance their specialization and provide opportunities for these experts to pass on their knowledge.
Additionally, within our departments and beyond we could be looking at our source material with a more critical eye, and try to cull the objective information presented in those texts for our uses. Creating academic and professional environments that encourage critical thought and provide tools and space to critically evaluate textual sources, as well as inherited knowledge and language, will be imperative.
Finally, we could advance our research of local terms for fibers, tools, and other materials followed by dissemination and promotion of that knowledge in our academic and professional settings. Finding more recent literature is a great way to start. In creating updated resources, collaboration within and between the hand-papermaking and paper-conservation communities is the best way forward. And, much would be gained if we expanded collaboration further by involving librarians, curators, historians, publishers, and codicologists. With a variety of source material and experts able to share knowledge with students and colleagues, we will be in a position to significantly widen our field of vision.
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NOTES
1.
Personally, for Radha, this is akin to checking an “Asian” box on a form as opposed to “South Asian” or “Indian.”
2.
Elaine Koretsky, Origin of Paper in China (Brookline, MA: International Paper Museum, 1999), film, 40:39, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1zdSzzwrIA (accessed October 6, 2021).
3.
Catherine Liu (colleague and former Fulbright Scholar), email exchange with Radha Pandey, October 2, 2021: “From my personal research, I associate “5” with the 5 primary categories of fibers used in Chinese paper (zhi; آژ): ma
(٣آ; hemp), cao (/پ; grass/straw), shu pi (٨n٪ض; tree bark), zhu zhi (&ث$l; bamboo), and teng (أأ; rattan). As for “types” of paper, it’s hard to put a number on it since there are many different ways to source, process, or mix each fiber. The most famous paper produced in China, xuan zhi (+إآژ), is comprised of a mix of shu pi (Pteroceltis tatarinowii) and cao (rice straw). There are also pure shu pi papers made from the bark of other trees such as paper mulberry. In addition to homogenizing the varieties of paper made in China by just referring to it as “Chinese papermaking,” xuan zhi and “rice paper” are commonly misused to generalize paper made in China. In the description of one of the videos, I noticed that zhu zhi paper is incorrectly referred to as “xuanzhi.”” Radha would like to add here that the second village and papermaking tools seen in Origin of Paper in China at timecode 26:31 are extremely similar to the Indo-Islamicate tools.
4.
Ibid., Catherine Liu: “When it comes to naming things in China, it gets kind of tricky, while mandarin (based on Beijing dialect) is the standard dialect of mainland China, there are hundreds of local dialects. Not everything is comprehensible to a non-local and not everything has a written form. I think this poses an interesting dilemma when trying to create a more accurate and inclusive dialogue about paper. Perhaps there’s more of a need for firsthand documentation of the oral history of paper rather than just focusing on videos where we view the process and listen to a non-local voiceover. Within China there are also many ethnic minority groups, many of which are the ones who retain papermaking traditions. However, when non-Chinese people refer to “Chinese people” they are typically referring to the Han people, who make up most of the population of China. I did notice in the video where Elaine Koretsky tours the five villages, she does not mention the ethnicity of papermakers. I believe this would be important to note, especially when she goes to villages in areas in South China associated with the Dai and Zhuang people. She does later mention minority groups in other parts of the video, just not when she’s at those villages.”
5.
Richenda Brim, Kristen St. John, and Aisha Wahab, “Re-centering the Bench,” forthcoming article in The Book and Paper Group Annual vol. 40 (2022).
6.
Elizabeth Lunning and Roy Perkinson, The Print Council of America Paper Sample Book: A Practical Guide to the Description of Paper (Boston: Print Council of America, 1996).
7.
Nancy Ash, Scott Homolka, Stephanie Lussier, Rebecca Pollak, Eliza Spaulding, and Renée Wolcott, Descriptive Terminology for Works of Art on Paper: Guidelines for the Accurate and Consistent Description of the Materials and Techniques of Drawings, Prints, and Collages (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014), http://www.philamuseum.org/doc_downloads/ conservation/DescriptiveTerminologyforArtonPaper.pdf.
8.
Islamic empires and material cultural influence spanned from Spain; North, Central and West Africa; Middle East; Central and South Asia; China; and Southeast Asia.
9.
Especially in India, people might think of Indian handmade paper as paper made in an auto-vat, not necessarily using the traditional methods to which I am referring.
10.
Some religions found in the area include Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism.
11. Arabic word meaning “community.”
12.
Dard Hunter, from his foreword in Victor Wolfgang Von Hagen, The Aztec and Maya Papermakers, first published in 1944 (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2014), 3–4.
13.
The dictionary definitions for “primitive” include words like pre-literate, naive, deliberately rejecting sophisticated artistic technique, unsophisticated.
14.
Kiyofusa Narita and Angélique Fulin, A Life of Ts'ai Lung and Japanese Paper-making (Tokyo: The Paper Museum, 1980).
15. Ibid, 91.
16.
Jesper Trier, Ancient Paper of Nepal (Copenhagen : Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, 1972).
17.
Masatoshi A. Konishi, Hāth-Kāghaz: History of Handmade Paper in South Asia (New Delhi: Aryan Books International, 2013).
18. Konishi’s research periods: 1977–78, 1994–95, 2003.
