At the time of Hunter's visit, two young granddaughters were on the scene, and it was these same women, now well into middle age, whom the Koretskys visited some fifty years after Hunter. In his 1947 monograph on the subject, Papermaking, Hunter stated that the family had ceased making paper, but at some later point, the two sisters had decided to continue.2 The Koretskys' DVD introduces us to the raw fiber that was used to make traditional Thai paper: the inner bark gleaned from the khoi tree (Streblus asper Lour.), once common in Thailand. In the same family (Moraceae) as paper mulberry (kozo; Broussonetia papyrifera (L.) Vent.), khoi fiber was obtained by harvesting the skinny branches, removing the outer bark, cooking the inner bark in an alkaline solution, followed by rinsing. The fiber was then hand beaten, and once sufficiently macerated, it was placed into a bucket and taken to the edge of the nearby klong, a canal. Entering the klong up to her knees, one sister placed one of many 20 x 60-inch moulds into the water. Constructed of a wooden frame over which a woven cloth was stretched, the mould floated in the klong. She took a handful or two of the beaten pulp that she placed into a bucket to which she added klong water. She agitated the pulp "balls" and poured the pulp into the mould, then gently patted and fingered the fiber to even out the layer. After distributing the fiber, she almost imperceptibly shook the mould and then slowly lifted it at a slight angle, draining away much of the water, allowing the fiber layers to set. With the charged mould propped up vertically, the other sister rolled a dowel over the surface to squeeze more water out and compact the fiber layers. The mould was then propped up, cloth-side out to the sun, so that air circulated around it, allowing the paper to dry quickly and evenly. Once Final Papermakers of the Royal Family of Thailand: Journeys to Bangsoom Village, 1986 and 1987 reviewed by cathleen baker Dard Hunter with Tym Niltongkum standing alongside the same pourmethod moulds seen in the DVD, 1935. Courtesy of Cathleen Baker; permission courtesy of Dard Hunter III. Final Papermakers of the Royal Family of Thailand: Journeys to Bangsoom Village, 1986 and 1987, DVD produced and narrated by Elaine Koretsky, 2013. Photography by Sidney Koretsky. Running time: 18 minutes. Available through Research Institute of Paper History and Technology, www.papermakinghistory.org. summer 2015 - 43 dry the sheets were peeled from the cloth and burnished to further smooth the surfaces. The sisters also showed the Koretskys two kinds of paper, a pleated (accordion-folded) plain sheet, and a carbon-black pigmented sheet. They referred to them as parabiak, paper they made for the Royal Family for use in manuscripts and books. A year later, when the Koretskys returned, the sisters were winding up their papermaking activities, and there was no one in the family ready to take over from them. The importance of this DVD is the documentation of what seems to be a very simple process—papermaking—especially the pouring method employed by the sisters. But Elaine Koretsky, an accomplished papermaker, found out it was not that easy. She waded into the klong to attempt to form a sheet, but the unaccustomed coordination needed to keep the mould from floating away, to hold the heavy bucket while simultaneously pouring, patting, and fingering the pulp, and to achieve the dramatic last step of spraying water onto the pulp defeated her. The documentation of these actions as moving images, rather than a succession of still images, is invaluable in the preservation of how people make paper, especially in those areas of the world where the craft is dying or has already died out. The Koretskys' contributions have been vital to our knowledge about how papermakers actually formed sheets, how their techniques differ from one another, and how each nuance of action can reveal itself in the paper. And while we owe a great debt to Dard Hunter for bringing these activities to our collective attention, it is people like Elaine and Sidney Koretsky who have brought them to life for posterity. Of course, there are technical problems with the DVD, primarily due to the fact that the content was pulled together from moving-picture films and slides. The images are generally low resolution and to view on my computer, I had to reduce the size down to 4 x 8 inches to make the image readable. I would suggest that in the future the typeface, slides, and photographs be high resolution even if the original film material cannot. All of those things being said, however, I recommend this DVD to anyone who has an abiding interest in papermaking and papermakers. ___________ notes 1. Dard Hunter, Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft (New York: Dover, 1978), 111–114, 141–144, 193, 223; Dard Hunter, Papermaking in Southern Siam (Chillicothe, OH: Mountain House Press, 1936); Cathleen A. Baker, By His Own Labor: The Biography of Dard Hunter (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2000), 168–170. 2. Hunter, Papermaking, 144.
