Mounting rice paper

Calligraphy pieces are written on rice paper, which can be really flimsy and prone to tearing. Therefore, completed works are usually mounted by pasting a thicker piece of paper behind them. This process of mounting makes the calligraphy piece sturdier, and it can then be put into a frame or affixed onto a scroll.

The traditional way of mounting uses starch glue to paste the backing paper. This actually allows the backing paper to be removed, if necessary, by wetting the calligraphy piece (although it can be a delicate operation). The process usually involves spraying water onto the calligraphy piece to even out any creases, after which starch glue is applied using a brush (usually on the backing paper, although it can be also applied directly to the back of the calligraphy piece). The backing paper is then placed onto the back of the calligraphy piece, and the mounted piece is left to dry.

This process can take some time. You need to make the starch glue, apply it evenly using a brush, and it also requires time to dry. And skill. Applying the starch glue takes some skill. But with modern science, mounting can be easily done today using ready-made mounting paper. Such paper comes with a thermal adhesive on one side. First, you place the calligraphy piece facing down, then spray water onto the back of the piece to even out the creases. Then, you place the ready-made mounting paper, with the adhesive side against the calligraphy piece, and align it. Using an iron, you apply heat to the non-adhesive side of the mounting paper. The heat from the iron causes the thermal adhesive to stick to the back side of the calligraphy piece, bonding them together. As a bonus, the heat also helps to dry the calligraphy piece. The entire process takes less than 5 minutes for small pieces of works, and even bigger pieces may not take more than 10 minutes.

Here is an example of ready-made mounting paper. The one on the left is for smaller pieces, while the roll on the right is for larger works (you need to cut the mounting paper to the size you need).

The disadvantage, though, is that the backing paper cannot be removed, since it is being adhered using a chemical adhesive. So you cannot remount the work.

I gave both methods a try. On the left are works mounted using the ready-made mounting paper, while those on the right were mounted using starch glue. For the brush, I used a paintbrush bought from the 100-yen store. Similarly, the starch glue was actually starch glue sold at the 100-yen store, watered down (roughly 1 part glue to 1 part water). I used both methods on different types of rice paper.

As you can see, the ready-made mounting paper gave a very nice finish to the pieces. The starch glue method has a bit of unevenness, because of my poor skills at applying glue. One of them (端午) even had dark spots, which came about because the glue picked up pieces of paper (with ink) which got deposited on another part of the paper.

I guess I will stick with the ready-made mounting paper for now, but also use the starch glue method with practice pieces so that I can improve my glue application skills.

 

Update 12 Aug 2023: I tried mounting a larger work, written on 半切 or paper that is about 35cm by 136cm. The result was... bad. So bad that I don't even want to put any photos here. It was very difficult to work with such a large piece of paper and I will probably need a lot more practice to get it right (eventually).

Update 13 Aug 2023: I made another attempt at mounting a bigger piece.

This time, I cut the ready-made mounting paper to be slightly smaller in size that the actual work. This made it easier to iron as the work would not stick to the ironing board. However, there are still some creases, and I even tore the work itself a bit (left end of the work) because I was trying to iron it while it was slightly wet. I guess the trick is to find an ironing surface big enough that I don't need to shift the work when ironing.