Japanese paper making

We took a class today from a wonderful fiber artist Amy Richard. She has stripped the pulp from branches of the Paper Mulberry that grow in her yard. It has been boiled for hours. Then the fiber is hammered with wooden mallets to break down the fibers. Once it is shredded it is put in a vat that mixes it for more hours. A frame containing a removable bamboo mat is dredged through the mixture of fiber and an agent that is very slimy to fuse the fibers together. She is putting the wet paper onto a piece of wet muslin cloth. We then added leaf stencils and sprayed with different colors of organic dyes, or left the paper plain. We took them home to dry.