Grown straight and tall and cured in the Florida sunshine, this premium kozo bark makes beautiful paper whether it be washi [Japanese-style], hanji [Korean-style], amate or any handmade paper technique you choose to use.
IMPORTANT: Two pounds of GREEN BARK are required to generate one pound of "white" scraped bark for papermaking.
ABOUT GREEN BARK:
You may have noticed that we refer to our kozo bark as GREEN BARK * (aka partially scraped). Here's why:
Traditionally, unscraped kozo bark is referred to as "black bark." This term refers to bark that is comprised of three layers: The inner "white" bark (that is used to make paper) along with the middle layer of green bark and the outermost layer of brownish black bark.
When harvesting and preparing our bark for sale, we remove 98% of the outer black bark immediately after steaming, leaving only the inner "white" bark along with the green middle layer which is much easier to remove (if you choose to) and less messy. Our green bark can be cooked "as is" without removing the green layer. In fact, some artists prefer cooking it with the green layer, most of which cooks off and results in the final paper having a very slight greenish tinge. Of course, the green layer may also be scraped off before cooking to achieve that beautiful warm white paper that kozo is so famous for.
MORE ABOUT KOZO BARK LAYERS: As the kozo plant grows and generates new plant cells within the inner bark (aka the bast fiber layer), the older cells slowly begin to migrate outward to become the middle green layer of bark and eventually migrating to the outermost layer that we refer to as black bark. This constant regeneration of bark cells is similar to the way our bodies generate new layers of skin, with the older cells becoming our outermost layer also known as the "epidermis."
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