The story.
The paper is made from something completely different than you might expect when you think of paper. It is made from elephant dung. Where as human being have to beat fibers to obtain paper pulp, with elephant dung we let the elephant do the hard work for us. They themselves pulp the fiber of all the food they eat.
After the dung has been collected it is left to dry. When the dung is steamed to kill the bacteria it is done thoroughly, the pulp and mixture is spread on the sheets and is laid in the sun to dry.
One of the things that make this paper so interesting is that not a single sheet is the same as the next. Everything depends on what the elephant had to eat, leaves gives a lighter dung which can be used for whiter paper and for paper that needs to be dyed but the elephant’s age is also of influence on the look and feel of the paper. Younger elephants with a mouthful of strong munching teeth with diminished chewing power produce dung with rougher fiber structure. In all cases the end result, however is always an excellent quality acid free paper. Suitable to print or write on.
