Decorative Paper

WHAT THIS CATEGORY IS ABOUT

The Decorative Paper section is our largest paper category. This comes as no surprise since China as the home of hand made paper for many centuries has developed an incredible variety of Chinese paper types for a large range of applications.

Each time we visit one of our paper manufacturers we find some beautiful new "gems" we fall in love with and which we are happy to share with our clients. On one hand there are the patterned papers - mostly classic Chinese shuen papers which are decorated with traditional Chinese motifs or patterns such as dragons, Chinese mythological creatures or symbols. Especially the Chinese couplet papers are available in a wide range of options with tree patterns, bamboo patterns or stone reliefs allowing for stunning effects when using them for your calligraphy or sumi artwork.
Then there are the colorful papers - everyone who has ever created a calligraphy artwork on a red decorative shuen paper knows the beautiful effect of deep dark ink on a red decorative shuen paper.
Another type of Chinese rice paper are papers which have special effects worked into the paper texture - mostly golden or silver speckles which allow stunning effects on your artwork such as rain or snow. To get an idea how this can look like, please take a look at some of the Sumi artworks from Christine Leisi such as "Magic Mountain" or "Bamboo" where she uses gold speckled Shuen paper to paint motifs of Swiss winter-landscapes.
Then there are different types of marbled papers such as "Waves of the Sea" which are treated in traditional techniques of paper marbling.

Another kind of products we feature in the Decorative Paper section are "paper-related products". What we consider Chinese paper related products are products where the Chinese paper is not by itself but part of a product such as Chinese Shuen paper fans - you can first paint or write on the Shuen paper, then assemble the entire fan which makes a unusual gift, Shuen paper albumbs folded like an accordion for smaller paintings, decorative Japanese Shikishi boards and of course the traditional Chinese hanging scrolls which are mostly used for Kanji calligraphy.

Please let us know should you be looking for a specific paper related product which you cannot find here and we are happy to find it for you.