Bamboo Leaf Paper Making Workshop in Fuldanga Village

Ist Phase of the Bamboo leaf paper paper making workshop in Fuldanga,Village Shyambati, Santiniketan

After the santal community from Fuldanga participated in the construction of the Workshop space for paper making,we moved forward in conducting the workshop on paper making from dried bamboo leaf

 Initially Baidyanath Murmu one of my collaborators in this project from the village approached all the houses in the village and invited the families to join in to participate in the paper making workshop.

Many of  the  member from the santal community in Fuldanga gather on 25th Appril in the club area where we constructed the workshop and joined hands in preparation of the pulp from the dried bamboo leaves .It went for almost three to four days as the dried jeaves needed to be boiled extensively for three to four hours each time to remove the acid and other fat content from the leaves.

So by 30th April the bamboo leaf pulp were ready to be transformed into papers.So mostly during the afternoon sessions after the days work the community members came and joined in according to their convenience.

Once the pulp ws ready on 2nd May,2011 we started making bamboo leaf paper in Fuldanga village.First I explained about the different tools necessary for making paper like the difference between a frame and a deckel and their respective functions.Then first I demonstartaed how a paper could be lifted from a paulp and how it can be layed on the felt and finally the process of tranferrring it to the drying bed were demonstarted to them.Soon the participants joined in and started working on the process .As there were lots of similarities between the different steps of paper making and the everyday activity of a the santal people (like the laying of the cloth,lifting of the pulp on the deckel and finally laying of the prepared pulp for drying) they very quickly  adopted to the process and generated some beautiful and perfect layres of papers.