When we first met Paul was on the point of retiring, the studio was a built on extra to the house but work occasionally came through. Let me say firstly I never liked a lot of the stuff that came in, it was culturally so different to what I expected of art. Its method of restoration was so different, and yet in Japan, there were silks manufactured for the fine strips that embellished the painting. Knobs crafted for the scroll and wooden boxes made to hold the scrolls when they were not in use. In every aspect of restoration, time flowed through seamlessly, it took patience to scratch off the hundreds of tabs at the back of the scroll, put on to reinforce the creases as the scroll was rolled up or rolled out to grace the wall of the tea room.
In the studio there hung a photo of when the Japanese Emperor and Empress came to visit the Japanese studio. There the artists sat kneeling at the long low tables, and there was Paul, solidly English at the end;).
People swan over for holidays and culture is lost in tourism and restaurants. But Paul collected stuff, and the first thing you realise is that Japan had very few natural resources. The making of goods in the past relied on simple things such as bamboo and the natural mineral dyes which he collected.
The following photos show how water is sprayed on over the protective tissues to release them from the special glue (Aged Paste) and then reapply new tissues.
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