I’m pretty sure many are asking, “Why Hahnemuehle? And how does one pronounce it?”

Hahnemuehle (Germany) has been around since 1584, and that is a seriously long time. They’ve been making papers since paper was invented (I made that part up). But seriously, these folks know paper. Although relatively new in Malaysia and pretty difficult to find, I decided to import these amazing papers as they are extremely well known in the printing industry, in particular their Fine Art papers for Inkjet, and have gotten to know them as I print Fine Art prints for the wedding industry. In terms of quality, they are second to none. And so in bringing these papers in, I am making a heavy investment and taking a calculated risk as they have yet to be made known in the artist circle locally.

Selecting which papers to bring in was the tough part, as they have so many wonderful watercolour papers to choose from. I manage to narrow them down to the swatches you see below, bypassing their thicker 400+ and 600gsm papers which are not suitable to be made into sketchbooks. The great thing about these papers is that even between the cold press papers of a different range, they exhibit almost completely different surface qualities and textures, which is great because it offers an assortment of variety and satiates a curious mind/artist to experiment which each one of them.

Make no mistake, these are great watercolour papers. And with each sketchbook that’s hand cut, hand sewn, hand glued, and cased-in by hand, it would make very little sense in putting in so much effort, only to use substandard or even commonly available watercolour papers. I have this innate belief that although many artists are comfortable with their usual brand of watercolour papers, there’s always a yearning to try something different, and experience something new, which is what I believe Hahnemuehle papers to be at this juncture (particularly in Malaysia).

All the watercolour sketchbook comes with the archival grade, Burgund 250gsm Cold Press papers. They are a great all-round watercolour paper, suitable for beginners and experienced artists alike. However, being a binder that specializes in customizing and binding wedding albums and keepsakes, I thought it would be pretty awesome to offer something that almost no other sketchbook maker has, and that’s the ability to select or upgrade to a different paper with the Watercolour Plus range.

So there you have it folks, the simple reason behind why I chose Hahnemuehle watercolour papers. Oh, and it’s pronounced as Hahn-eh-muh-le, or something close enough.