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About Chiyogami (Yuzen)
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How is Chiyogami made? A visual tour.

The Chiyogami we buy is hand-silkscreened in several different small, family-run studios across Japan.

The process beings when base papers are brought into the studio. Base papers are made from different materials depending on the individual studio.

To create a single completed sheet of Chiyogami, each base sheet is silkscreened with as many colours as there are in that particular pattern - in most cases, four or five colours.

For each pattern, then, there are as many screens to be stored as there are colours. With thousands of patterns per studio, this can present quite a storage challenge!
After the base sheet has been pasted to a wooden board for stability during the silkscreening process, the first silkscreen is registered and ink applied.
Each sheet of paper is dried on racks like this to let the ink dry between applications.
The screens for subsequent colours must be painstakingly registered (aligned) so that the colour layers lie precisely in relation to each other.

For pattern 503C, six colour layers are applied. Below are samples after each colour layer has been applied, culminating with the gorgeous final product on the right.