Khadi Papers are based in the UK. We have our own papermill, Khadi Papers India in South India. This is where our cotton rag papers come from. We also import some of the very finest Himalayan papers from Nepal and Bhutan. We sell our papers from our UK warehouse to more than 40 countries around the world.
Coming from an art school background we were interested in paper as an artists' material and this remains the focus of what we do.
In the early 1980s we were the first to introduce Indian handmade papers to artists and designers in Europe and the US. We worked closely with papermakers in India, and later Nepal and Bhutan, and now almost twenty years on we are still working with the same people. But it's not just work. Last year we trekked to the ice covered lakes of Gosaikunda, at 4,000 metres in the Himalayas with our Nepalese paper supplier Milan Bhattarai. We've had a lot of adventures along the way.
Coming from an art school background we were interested in paper as an artists' material and this remains the focus of what we do.
In the early 1980s we were the first to introduce Indian handmade papers to artists and designers in Europe and the US. We worked closely with papermakers in India, and later Nepal and Bhutan, and now almost twenty years on we are still working with the same people. But it's not just work. Last year we trekked to the ice covered lakes of Gosaikunda, at 4,000 metres in the Himalayas with our Nepalese paper supplier Milan Bhattarai. We've had a lot of adventures along the way.
In India, around 12 years ago, we set up our own papermill, Khadi Papers India, with our partner, Vasudevan. Vasu was the manager of the papermill of the Handmade Paper Institute in Pune, a training institue for the whole of India. No one knows more about making paper - and really making it happen - than Vasudevan and it has been a great opportunity to work with him.
Our mill is just outside the village of Tarihal near Hubli, in Karnataka, South India. This is cotton growing country and on the country roads you see trucks piled high with raw cotton. Hubli itself has the biggest open air cotton market in Asia, an amazing sight.Cotton is the raw material of our papers (see ABOUT THE PAPERS ) and so this is an appropriate place.
At Khadi Papers India Vasu is joined by his cousin Subu who had previously worked at the papermill of TARA (Technology and Action for Rural Advancement) in New Delhi and his cousin Srikumar, a graduate of the Pune Handmade Paper institute. So it is a family affair.
The mill directly employs 47 men and women from 3 local villages and indirectly provides work for bookbinders, printers, envelope makers and the carpenter, Irrappa, who makes our moulds and deckles. We now have our own organic farm, irrigated by run-off water from the paper mill. Here we grow bananas, mangoes, chikkoo fruit, organic vegetables and the bougainvillea and marigold flowers we use in our flower inclusion papers.
Our mill is just outside the village of Tarihal near Hubli, in Karnataka, South India. This is cotton growing country and on the country roads you see trucks piled high with raw cotton. Hubli itself has the biggest open air cotton market in Asia, an amazing sight.Cotton is the raw material of our papers (see ABOUT THE PAPERS ) and so this is an appropriate place.
At Khadi Papers India Vasu is joined by his cousin Subu who had previously worked at the papermill of TARA (Technology and Action for Rural Advancement) in New Delhi and his cousin Srikumar, a graduate of the Pune Handmade Paper institute. So it is a family affair.
The mill directly employs 47 men and women from 3 local villages and indirectly provides work for bookbinders, printers, envelope makers and the carpenter, Irrappa, who makes our moulds and deckles. We now have our own organic farm, irrigated by run-off water from the paper mill. Here we grow bananas, mangoes, chikkoo fruit, organic vegetables and the bougainvillea and marigold flowers we use in our flower inclusion papers.