Design Line Fast Lane: Italian papers in China

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Italian papers in China

On the 18th July I attended a paper introduction seminar hosted by Cordenons paper mill in Hangzhou, a beautiful scenic city in China. The sales manager of the Italian paper mill, Philipe Virey, spoke on the products . The presence of the CEO ,Ottavio Zucca, underscored the importance of Asia especially China the awakened giant. About fifty people came from nearby Hong Kong and Taiwan, and not so near Singapore, Indonesia , Malaysia and Phillipines. But the biggest contingent in numbers is China with its many paper dealers in various cities. I met a Malaysian lady settled in Shenzhen selling fancy papers but originally from Klang. She joked and spoke in her made-in-China mandarin interspersed with her Malaysian lah English and the occasional Hokkien outbursts.She claimed to have met me before in Johore.
The other interesting episode was meeting the the owners of Star Papers in Phillipines. When I joined the paper line in the eighties this company was making headlines to me importing unbelievable tons of US fancy papers and was like the ONE fancy specialist in that Catholic majority Asian country[another point of fascination]. After almost thirty years I get to meet the father and son team and couldn't be more impressed by their humility.

The papers that were introduced were unique.
So...Silk........So...Jean........So...Wool
So...Silk is an amazing paper that feels like garment material, silk. The paper goes through a special making process that shapes the material pliable and soft and yet strong enough for offset printing and other printing processes. Actually it contains silk!.

So...Jean. yes you guessed it . The paper is made partly from cotton. It looks exactly like a jean material.
The felt marked surface texture feels and looks like jean cotton. If you print a pair of Levis on it you would probably want to wear it.

So...wool. Yep! contains a bit of wool. Its touch is rough like the Merino sheep wool and yet printed colours
on it looked great.

I might add ; they are all FSC ,a must added feature in the western countries.

The seminar was great. The new papers and the interesting people in a picturesque surrounding made it very memorable. Following are a couple of photos taken there.

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A must watch documentary

I have just watched the movie" Home "which was stunning. Excellent videos from the air narrated by award- winning actress Glenn Close with a heart piercing message. This non-profit movie is made by Yann Arthus-Bertrand and financed by many good people and companies. This is what Yann has to say;

We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate. The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being. For this purpose, HOME needs to be free. A patron, the PPR Group, made this possible. EuropaCorp, the distributor, also pledged not to make any profit because Home is a non-profit film. HOME has been made for you : share it! And act for the planet.

Indiscriminate cutting down of trees is obviously one of the issues in this film and that reminded me the importance of NGOs like FSC, PEFC, SFI and so on.

click this link to watch it for free

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

Stephen

"Above is paradise;below is Suzhou and Hangzhou"

The above popular saying traces back 1000 years to Tang Dynasty [618-907AD].

Hangzhou, located in the southeast of China, is a beautiful scenic city . The famous West Lake, the profound tea culture and as the "City of Silk" make it a must for visitors to China. It is one of the seven ancient capitals of China and dates back to 8,000 years ago in the Neolithic Age.

Visitors like Marco Polo in the 13th century wrote of it as the "City of Heaven". Apparently of all the places in China Mao Ze Dong loved Hangzhou the most.

Yes......I know ,this is not a travel blog. But I just want to brag that I was there. And for a paper seminar. It was a wonderful presentation by the paper mill. But more about that later.

I had one of those moments. Traveling along two-laned clean roads from the outskirts to the city you are greeted with rows of houses with European facade only to be awakened as you enter the town to realise one is still in China ; signboards ominously proclaiming its oriental heritage. But this is a far cry from the image in the early nineties. I remember then in Beijing everything looked like an adaptation from the Red Army ; men and women dressed unmistakably similar just almost like the buildings , uniform dull and faded green.

But back to the present. Our paper seminar ran for two days 17th July and 18th July. On the 19th a local Chinese paper merchant offered to take us to the famous wetlands. So that Sunday this nice gentlleman in his early forties arrived at the hotel in his German automobile. We soon found out that though he and his wife own the business he is actually an active interior designer. As the car wove our way through the city we were flanked on both sides many commercial shops with glaring Chinese signs [otherwise hieroglyphics to me] and Chinese advertisements. I was reminded that I was still in mainland China. I slumped into the soft plush leathery rear seat of the latest BMW530. I was just soaking in the comforts of capitalism when the music played a lady voice singing jazz in French. Twenty minutes of lovely unrecognisable songs the CD player switched into the music of the Carpenters, one of my favourites[ Richard and Karen of the seventies]. Here as we were gliding through the Communist terrain in the sleek German machine drowned in the familiar soothing American sounds of "We've only just begun" I went into in cloud nine.

It was the moment. I could not believe it. Flashes of delightful nostalgic moments of my idealistic youth almost forty years ago thrusted against a background of an authoritarian Comminiust regime of the 21st century. East meets West, Capitalism marries Communism . Evolution. Destiny. Change.

Possibly, as the song goes it has only just begun.

Design Line Fast Lane