In 1925, Hunter visited the South Sea Islands in order to see how tapa (bark cloth) was made and to collect samples. Koretsky's trip in 1990 closely followed Hunter's. She visited the islands of Samoa and Tonga. In the small village of Fasi in Tonga, tapa makers demonstrated the process for Koretsky, beating strips of mulberry into a small section, called feta-aki. Many feta-aki were pasted together into a large sheet, ngatu, and decorated using stencils. During trips to Japan in 1976, 2002, and 2004, Koretsky visited papermills in Ogawa village, Kurotani village, Kawanoe (on Shikoku Island), and Nagatomi, which were some of the places that Hunter went to in 1933. In her 2004 visit to Nagatomi, Koretsky recorded the innovative semi-automatic method of forming a sheet of paper, a technique she also observed being used in Korea. Koretsky visited Korea in 1989 and 2004, and notes that the traditional Korean sheet-forming technique has all but disappeared, having been displaced by Japanese nagashizuki sheet formation, as Hunter had also observed in 1933. In 1935, Hunter visited Southeast Asia to what was then called Indo-China a tribute to dard hunter Elaine Koretsky. Brookline, MA: Research Institute of Paper History & Technology, 2006. DVD running time: 30 minutes. $40.00 including printed transcript and shipping within the United States (add $3.00 for overseas postage). Available from the Research Institute, tel 617-232-1636, paperroad@aol.com. A Tribute to Dard Hunter reviewed by cathleen a. baker Dard Hunter, in front of Mountain House, examining a piece of tapa he brought back from Samoa in 1925. Courtesy of Cathleen A. Baker. Elaine Koretsky, in her 1990 research trip to Tonga, beating paper mulberry bark for feta-aki. Photo: Sidney Koretsky. Courtesy of Elaine Koretsky. A Tribute to Dard Hunter His Papermaking Expeditions 1926-1937 winter 2007 - 39 reviews and Siam. In his 1936 book, Papermaking in Southern Siam, Hunter describes his visit with papermaker Tym Niltongkum and his family. Remarkably, during Koretsky's visit to Bangkok in 1987, she found two of Niltongkum's descendants, a pair of sisters, still making paper by hand. Always eager to "have a go," Koretsky tried her hand at the difficult task of making paper with the mould floating in a klong, a canal running alongside the house. Koretsky reports in the DVD that regrettably the sisters have given up the craft and moved away. Hunter's last research trip to Asia was to India in 1937, and like his other trips, the collected papers and craft-related materials and tools became part of the Dard Hunter Paper Museum, now housed at the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum in Atlanta. Koretsky visited India in 1978 and 1986, and confirmed that while some techniques Hunter saw in 1937 were still being employed, new ones had appeared in the interim. Koretsky observed papermakers in Sanganer using similar papermaking moulds as Hunter described in his 1939 Papermaking by Hand in India. In Ahmedabad and Pondicherry, Koretsky witnessed deckle-box papermaking which probably came into use after Hunter's visit. While Hunter's words and photographs presented in his numerous books remain edifying, the paper and tapa crafts captured on video by Koretsky really come alive in this DVD. Frustratingly, the video segments are brief and some are of poor quality due to early videotaping technologies, but they indicate the rich and important repository in the Research Institute of Paper History & Technology, which Koretsky founded and directs. Thankfully, DVDs that focus on Koretsky's individual trips are also available from the Research Institute. I can highly recommend this DVD to anyone interested in learning more about the incredible variety of Eastern hand papermaking techniques, much of which is still in practice today, and two of the most significant people in the history of hand papermaking, Dard Hunter and Elaine Koretsky. Suvalee Inchukul (granddaughter of Tym and Piung Niltongkum) shows one of her handmade books to Elaine Koretsky. Photo: Sidney Koretsky, 1986. Courtesy of Elaine Koretsky. Hunter with Siam (Thai) papermaker Tym Niltongkum from Hunter's 1936 book, Papermaking in Southern Siam. Courtesy of Cathleen A. Baker.
