The many sheets of beautiful liusha paper pasted up in the glass cabinets in Wang Kuo-tsai's office were all made by Wang himself. (Hsueh Chi-kuang)

Flowing sand, thick weave, cicada wing, Xue Tao, silk cocoon, ceramic blue, sunset. . . . You could be forgiven for thinking that these are the beautiful names of ancient Chinese silken fabrics. But in fact they are handmade papers of unique texture and quality, recreated in the research laboratory of Wang Kuo-tsai.

If soft, feminine silk belongs to Lei Ying, the legendary inventor of sericulture, then paper, hard and masculine, belongs to Cai Lun, the inventor of papermaking-and to Wang Kuo-tsai.

Newsprint, laser-printing paper, manuscript paper, notepaper, recycled paper-for most people, the different kinds of paper we are in contact with every day are simply carriers for the written word, or temporary wrapping materials. But for painters and calligraphers, paper is like cloth in the eyes of fashion designers-it is the basis for their creative inspiration.

"I'm rarely envious of how well someone else paints, but I do get jealous of others having good paper to paint on. Perhaps that's because you can always improve your own painting technique, but for good paper you are entirely dependent on others. What's more, as times progress, paper suitable for traditional Chinese painting is getting harder and harder to find." So says new-generation Taiwanese painter and calligrapher Hou Chi-liang, who studied for five years with Chiang Chiao-shen, one of the leading lights of modern Chinese ink-wash painting. Hou recalls his search for suitable art paper: "As well as hunting for information in historical documents from down the ages, ten years ago I went from Taipei to Puli, and then to Hong Kong, Beijing, Nanjing, Yangzhou, Anhui Province, and Japan, and even half way round the world to Rome and Egypt, just looking for good paper."

After coming back empty-handed from these long journeys, Hou happened to see in the corner of the newspaper a report that someone at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (TFRI) was reproducing ancient types of paper. On going there in person, he discovered to his astonishment that the paper he had been looking for was to be found in a drab official building only five minutes drive from his home, and the person making it was not some white-haired, venerable master craftsman, but a 1950s-born TFRI assistant researcher-Wang Kuo-tsai.