About five years ago, Linda Marshall was in Strasbourg, France when she went into a stationery store and noticed that the window display featured Japanese paper from The Japanese Paper Place, a Toronto-based wholesaler of fine Japanese paper.
Marshall was already familiar with The Japanese Paper Place, having previously lived in Toronto. In fact, her mom was an artist and had worked with Japanese paper, exposing Marshall to Japanese paper as a teenager. “I thought that it was pretty cool that this tiny little store from Toronto had some kind of global reach,” Marshall said.
When Marshall returned home to the U.S., she called the owner of the Toronto store, Nancy Jacobi, who taught Marshall about the history of Japanese paper and how it’s different from Western paper.
“It’s made from a renewable resource, from the inner bark of three types of bushes (kozo, gampi and mitsumata) in Japan,” explained Marshall. “Rice farmers would strip the fiber from the inside of the bark each fall and use it to make paper in the winter. They would grow rice in the summer, harvest the rice in the fall and make paper in the winter.”
Marshall continued: “It’s a tradition that goes back more than 1,000 years. Because Japan was isolated for so many centuries and didn’t do a lot of trading with the outside world, they developed paper very differently from the West. It’s very long-fibered. We tend to think of paper as more disposable, but in Japan, paper is reused and revered and very strong.”
At the time, Marshall was doing marketing and website design in San Francisco, but with inspiration from Jacobi, she soon founded Washi Arts, a specialty merchant of handmade Japanese papers. “Nancy is my mentor,” said Marshall. “She’s got over 40 years of knowledge locked in her head. I’m always trying to pick her brain.”
After Marshall’s husband was offered a job in Delta, B.C., they decided to settle in Blaine. “I thought it was better to be in the U.S. to be able to ship to U.S. customers,” said Marshall. “I’m very happy to be here in Blaine.”
Through its website washiarts.com, Washi Arts sells an extensive range of Japanese papers including decorative and natural papers for printmaking, book arts, calligraphy, graphic design, bookbinding, conservation and repair, printing and letterpress. The papers they offer are available in a very wide range of fibers, colors, patterns, weights and sizes.
Marshall also started traveling around the country, presenting at universities and teaching workshops on using Japanese papers in artwork, bookbinding and paper conservation and repair.
In 2019, Marshall decided to launch a series of workshops in Blaine. “I travel so much and it was getting really tiring, so I thought, ‘I wonder whether people in my own backyard would be interested in this,’” she said. “Up until then, I’d always been invited to teach elsewhere. So I decided to do this little test series to see if people would come to Blaine.”
Marshall’s 2019 workshops, which took place in July last summer at the Blaine Harbor Boating Center, were a great success. They sold out, attracting about 40 people to Blaine from Alabama, Georgia, Ohio, Southern California, B.C., Oregon and elsewhere.
This year, Marshall will be offering additional workshops in Blaine, including a workshop on Saturday and Sunday, February 22-23. There will also be another workshop on Friday through Sunday, March 13-15, as well as a workshop on Friday through Sunday, April 3-5.
Topics to be covered include paste papers, which were historically made by bookbinders to make the decorative sheets in the front and back of books. “The papers are made using a type of wheat paste, and can be used for bookbinding, calligraphy and collage,” said Marshall.
Other topics include traditional Japanese woodblock printing, which involves the use of handcarved blocks. “It’s probably the technique that most people would recognize if they’ve seen Japanese prints in a museum,” said Marshall. “There’s a resurgence in popularity for artists wanting to learn that technique, because it uses non-toxic materials.”
Other topics will include book arts and collage, decorative stitching on paper and making fabric out of long-fibered Japanese paper. “It makes beautiful, beautiful fabric,” she said.
For a list of upcoming workshops in Blaine, visit washiarts.com/workshops. For additional information, please contact Linda Marshall at linda@washiarts.com.
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