At the time, Dr. Usama al-Khaldi, one of the board members at Darat al-Funun and a renowned chemist, was sending local plant fibers to Bahrain, where he had previously set up a hand papermaking facility, to have sample sheets made. He hoped to eventually establish a papermaking facility in Jordan. Apparently, no one else in Jordan was involved in making paper from virgin fiber, although a recycling factory had been active for the past twenty years. My own interest in papermaking stemmed from my days in France, at S. W. Hayter's Atelier 17, where involvement in sculptural etching brought the dimensional qualities of paper into focus. It was not until several years later that I learned how to make paper at the Women's Studio Workshop (WSW), in Rosendale, New York, and subsequently became their production papermaker for two years. Since then, I have continued to make paper, almost always at WSW, whenever I needed it for my work, whether sculptural or flat, installation or collaboration. Thus, I returned to Jordan in May 1996, armed with the basic necessities to conduct my workshop. I stayed on the rambling, steeply-stepped grounds of Darat al-Funun, in the artists-in-residence accommodation. One of the many small daily pleasures of being there was to sip strong, sweet Arabic coffee early in the morning while sitting beside a Syrian style fountain at the entrance to the building. We decided to limit the papermaking workshop to a group of seven people, most of them artists and four of them part-time staff. In this way, the course could be intensely focused and the project could be carried on after my departure. The course itself dealt with Western-style sheet formation, sizing, and pigmentation; building images from shaped sheets, collaged and overlapped; pulp painting; dimensional bas-relief techniques; and casting. The intent was to impart techniques and skills while using the workshop as a bridge into the framework of available local resources. In the interest of having enough pulp, we used pre-beaten, unbleached abaca and cotton linters initially rehydrated and separated by means of a drill with a paint mixer attachment. We achieved more satisfactory results mid-way through the course when we had access to a Hollander beater. We gathered, cooked, and prepared a variety of plant fibers, both to make pure sample sheets and as added texture to the cotton and abaca. The main fibers we used were: freesia, iris, garlic, cane, and banana leaves; palm fronds; and husks of maize. The studios at Darat al-Funun are available to any artist for a nominal fee and a papermaking set up was added to the existing facilities for sculpture, printmaking, and photography. The large, multi-roomed, stone-walled printmaking studio was rearranged to accommodate plastic vats for sheets 8�" x 11" and smaller, and we raised an old enamel bath tub on cement blocks to use as a vat for four moulds and deckles measuring approximately 16" x 20". With the help of Darat al-Funun's effervescent director, Ali Maher, we found a screw-type press: sturdy, steel-framed, and five feet tall. In fact, two presses existed, tucked away behind a blacksmith's shop. (Both were originally intended to press flat cardboard, approximately ten sheets at a time, into shaped trays for carryout food.) The blacksmith gladly modified and sold one. We dried pressed sheets of paper on a wide stone verandah outside the printmaking studio and on plaster walls behind my residence. Shortly after my arrival in May, I spoke with Dr. Khaldi and discovered that he had been able to realize his quest to set up a hand papermaking facility in Jordan, under the umbrella of the Noor al-Hussein Foundation. This non-profit, non-governmental organization, started in 1985, oversees long-term developmental projects, both social and economic, designed to integrate local human and material resources. One aspect of their activities involves working with under-developed communities by helping to construct commercially viable enterprises, which will eventually be able to make an income from both Jordanian and tourist markets. One of the foundation's projects is underway in Wadi Seer, a valley not far from Amman, where women from five of its villages form the core of an expanding handicraft center. A weaving workshop with hand looms has been functioning successfully there for about two years; there is also a food processing center and a ceramics studio. Newer goals for the facility include wood and metal workshops, and Dr. Khaldi's papermaking studio, with the proposed date for full production set for August 1996. I arranged a field trip for my class from Darat al-Funun to visit the papermaking facility in Wadi Seer: to see how it was set up, to order batches of properly beaten pulp, and to discuss future collaborative projects. The center is located in the village of Iraq al-Amir and is housed in a cluster of old farmhouses built on, and in the midst of, Greek ruins dating back to 500 B.C.E. The long, low, spacious buildings have been recently renovated and the complex was immaculate: outer walls of coarsely chiseled limestone, blindingly bright in the midday heat; clean flagstone patios; and well-tended flowers and plants. The buildings themselves were refreshingly cool inside. The main overseer of the papermaking project, Dr. Khaldi, goes in daily to check on all manner of details. The day we visited, he was in the process of tinkering with a newly built Hollander beater; the grinding wheel was still not quite in alignment with the bedplate. During the winter, beater parts had been ordered from Lee Scott MacDonald and the imported bed plate and grinding wheel had been secured in a body built out of limestone, a commonly used local building material, bolted to thick steel legs. This handsome beater was still going through a teething process of fine adjustment, but was very close to being ready for full use. The manager of the papermaking project, Rana Ireifij, is a graduate in chemistry from Jordan University and a talented young woman. She was training seventeen women from the surrounding five villages as potential papermakers. The twelve who showed the most promise would stay on; the remaining five would be apprenticed in other workshops. The women, all in their twenties, were mostly either married to or the daughters of soldiers or policemen. They were by turn shy, curious, and eager to show off what they were doing. The women at Iraq al-Amir primarily make paper of okra and vine stems. They are experimenting with paper made from cane leaves, banana leaves and stems, and olive branches, among other fibers. I wondered about mulberry, which was particularly noticeable during my stay, as the trees were heavily laden with sweet fruits, however it seems there are not enough of them. The women cook gathered fibers in massive stainless steel vats on gas rings, rinse them well, then dry and sort them onto shelves in the storage room, where they weigh them before beating. The paper is waterleaf and they surface size it with starch, using the traditional Arab and Persian method. The sheets measure A4, although the Fiberglas vats could accommodate larger sizes in the future. The papermakers couch the paper onto marble slabs with canvas off-cuts as felts; pressing takes place in a hydraulic press. To date, the finished sheets are being tried for silk-screen and offset printing (including the reproduction of old maps), marbling, watercolor paintings, hand-lettered Arabic calligraphy, and color photocopying. Once technicalities have been ironed out, those running the program think there will be a definite commercial niche for these papers. My group returned to Darat al-Funun thoroughly enthusiastic about what they had seen and excited about the prospects of future collaborative work with the papermakers in Iraq al-Amir. Two distinctive branches were emerging from the revival of this ancient craft in Jordan. On the one hand, village women were producing paper for commercial use while improving the quality of life within their communities and using readily available local fibers; on the other, curiosity existed within the artistic community to explore handmade paper as a medium. Within the class, once the basics of sheet formation had been tackled, distinctive ways of working became almost immediately apparent. One young Palestinian artist, who had recently returned from Canada, told me that learning how to make paper had been very timely for her; she had been stuck in a certain place with her own work, feeling the need for a new vehicle of expression. She found the prospect of expanding her ideas by means of dimensional paper exciting. Others responded similarly. Doors were clearly being opened as they realized the increasing number of artistic possibilities such a versatile medium made available to them. In addition, there was something refreshing about the revival of a skill that, for centuries, figured so strongly in the Arab world: the rediscovery and redefining of an historic pulse. In 1995, Darat al-Funun began another program, called Summer '95, a multidisciplinary arts festival intended as an annual event. Summer '96 exhibited site specific works made by the seven artists who participated in the papermaking workshop, as well as lectures given by Dr. Khaldi. To pursue continued experimentation in papermaking, Darat al-Funun and Iraq al-Amir hope to overlap, fostering the exchange of ideas, which can only benefit both. Small workshops will be held at the first facility to promote further interest in papermaking, and, as well as learning to make their own paper, artists will be able to order fine papers to their specification from the mill at the second site. The mill will keep evolving and refining its range of commercial papers and the specific demands of professional artists, who currently have extremely limited access to fine papers in Jordan, should provide added technical challenges to the Wadi Seer papermakers.
