Korean Traditional Hanji Crafts

I recently took a hanji class (in Korea). Hanji is the traditional Korean mulberry paper, the better pieces handmade, that has texture, is fibrous, and is commonly used in many kinds of art -- calligraphy, paintings, crafts and more. The hanji class was one month long, met four times a week, and positively enlightened me on how people can be very clever with paper.

I had so much fun with being creative that I decided my mom would love doing some craftsy things too, so I bought several smallish square boxes -- guess I'll call them candy boxes -- and various kinds of paper. I measured and clipped hanji to cover piece by piece the sides and insides of the boxes, and then after I got to the States, I invited mom's friends over for a craft-day party. 

Of course I had to model how to use the paper and so made a tissue box out of a dark red for my mom's living room, a matching octagonal candy dish with hanja-style hanji (hanja is words written in Chinese script) and also a red jewelry box. They really accent her blue living room and no one has anything like the pieces around! Mom's friends just oohed and aahed, so they got excited about "box making" and were ready to create their small hanji masterpieces. 

Absolutely love the turtle clasp!

So then mom and her two friends made their pieces. I just supervised like my hanji teacher had done for me, and helped them apply the correct layers of glue to harden the box and other tricks like tearing off excess hanji in corners to prevent the paper from drying bulked up. They couldn't finish their boxes in just one hour because when applying the glossy coating, the boxes must be dry. So a few hours after they left I glossed the boxes up with two coatings of gloss. I must say, the boxes turned out really well. One friend was particularly gentle when applying coats of glue -- she brush stroked so gently and carefully because she didn't want to leave any brush impressions in the glue, so I was careful to not leave any impressions when I applied the coating.  

Then I got creative. Instead of just using Korean motifs with the Korean paper, I chose to mix things up a bit -- Korean paper with Western nature motifs and bleached to a rustic antique look. Gave it away to another friend at church but mom's friends were there and while they had previously been all excited about making red wrinkled hanji tissue boxes like I had made mom, they then became more interested in making a rustic country tissue box.

I used woodsies to make the motifs. Kind of cool!

And then I got super creative and wanted to design my own hanji-like table lamp. Instead of using glossed cardboard for framing, I used some Baltic plywood, which is somewhat light and thin, to make the frame. Bought two 15watt craft lights that had switches for turning the lamp on and off, and used a very thick old hangar to secure the two lamp bulbs in fixed hanging position. Took me a few hours to cut my pattern (turned out really rustic), and splice my two lights into one strand. Then it was a matter of just using various kinds of glue to put the hanji on correctly. Not as elegant as I planned but I rather like the rustic look. Had no use for it so gave it away at a church party as the grand prize. The winner seemed quite happy!

With my scroll saw I cut out the Baltic plywood lamp frame.

My Baltic plywood framed hanji lamp. The bulbs were made with hanji paper-machete-ed over two balloons. After the bulbs dried I painted them. Stain would have been better but didn't have any on hand. 

The large pin-holes in the bulbs were made with a darning needle poked through the skin of the bulb.

Baltic Birch Plywood Tea Box

The lid of mom's plastic tea box broke off ages ago. Since, it's been fixed and refixed but it's reached a point when it says "no more!" So thought I'd build mom a little larger custom-made tea box that would match the decor in her kitchen and would also be something from my heart. And kudos for my slow work, but got it done in time for Valentine's Day. Perfect!

Materials used were basically Baltic birch plywood cut on my scroll saw (since I don't have a table saw) and wood glue. I kind of made my pattern as I went. And when I was gluing the front pieces on, covered the bas-relief pieces with paper so I wouldn't get glue on them while doing paste-up, and yet, when I took off the papers, well, there were glue stains all over them. Ah well. Chalk it up to a learning experience. This was the first box I ever made so am still pretty happy with it, and mom was ecstatic! We especially love the woodsie shapes used to make flower petals on the top. Transforms a plain box into a box with a simple but free-out-in-nature flair.

At least a third larger than her previous plastic tea box (which BTW was so crammed that that was probably why the lid broke and then kept breaking after repairs. 

the lid accented with woodsie shapes 

Mom is in love with her new "fancy" and certainly one-of-a-kind tea box!

Blood Against the Snows

In the space of a single afternoon the beauty of the palace gardens was bloodied with the bodies of royalty. Crown Prince Diprendra committed matricide, patricide, fratricide and then suicide, ensuring that the country that looked to its king as if looking to its god would suffer not only socially at the loss but be cut to their souls with the death of their god.

Gregson's book Blood against the Snows: The Tragic Story of Nepal's Royal Dynasty (2002) is not an attempt to explain what took place on the dreadful night of June 2001, but a look at the sequence of events that led up to the matter. Knowing exactly what took place was consumed in the ashes of the dead Crown Prince's funeral pyre. Yet, to expose the growing shakiness of the Shah kingdom which had lost its functional power in recent decades, Gregson takes the reader back in time so he/she can see how the kingdom came to power over the centuries and how its king has been steeped in immortal legend and belief systems which elevate his status to pantheonic proportions, and how those godly proportions slowly became estranged from actual management in an expanding trade and economic developing world.

Gregson provides understanding to his readers on the profound loss and sense of disbelief and denial concerning what took place. The mountains, the deeply secluded places, are an age-old place of tradition for retreat and refuge, not a place for treachery and deceit. They are to be a place to safely harbor the king, a space for celestial enlightenment.

The king, in his elevated status on his elevated mountain, was/is still revered in traditional ways long forgotten elsewhere. In Nepal the King was a god, the father and protector of his people; therefore, killing the King was not just regicide, but deicide. Reverence and obedience to the King was the only life-choice to make and so killing him and his family was equivalent to destroying one's gods, one's belief system and therefore one's faith. A nation without faith is a nation without hope.

Jonathan Gregson explores the meaning of the Nepalese regent and his functional importance still in Nepal. With unrivaled contacts among the surviving courtiers and members of Nepal's royal family, Gregson was the only non-Nepalese writer to interview King Birendra in the subsequent decade since the regicide. Born in India, he is also the author of Kingdoms Beyond the Clouds and Bullet Up the Grand Trunk Road. He is a regular writer and broadcaster for BBC, Channel 4, the Sunday Telegraph, the Independent, among diverse others.