In this digital age, few know the joys of feeling the texture of a pretty, handmade paper and imagining the many things it can help conjure. Le Papier Inc, a teeny store at Kemps Corner, will help you rediscover such paper pleasures
In this digital age, few know the joys of feeling the texture of a pretty, handmade paper and imagining the many things it can help conjure. Le Papier Inc, a teeny store at Kemps Corner, will help you rediscover such paper pleasures
There was a time when many girls (and lots of boys we know too) maintained a regular Dear Diary, when wedding invitations were printed on ornate cards, and school projects meant lugging home tons of chart paper to work on. Today, the diary has gone digital (no locks needed either), wedding invites are often sent over e-mail or even a text message ('u r invtd to so-and-so's wddng') and school projects are submitted via fancy Powerpoint presentations. Of course, we are happy about thousands of trees being saved in the process, but whatever happened to running your fingers down a neat handmade paper with pressed flowers and leaves, or a fancy wrapping paper that we meticulously saved and hoped to reuse, we wonder.
Inside the paper lover's haven. PICs / BIPIN KOKATE
Our paper ponderings were punctuated by a teeny shop at Kemps Corner that used the humble paper 'lazer cut' in pretty patterns and strung together to form a sweet curtain for its window display. We entered the store to find ourselves amidst hundreds of papers with different designs and colour combinations giving you the possibility of thousands of permutations and combinations. Though you won't find too much in terms of prints, there's a lot here when it comes to texture ufffd we fell for the dainty 'lace' paper and the ones with the cut design, though we found it best to keep away from the ones with velvet embossing. Bappi-da would approve of the ones with a metallic sheen and we were told that Rani Mukherjee recently picked up a few of the translucent bags in pastel colours. Good choice, Ms Mukherjee.
"All paper in here is made from cotton hosiery waste, which means that it doesn't require wood at all," owner of the store Smita Parekh informed us on the phone later. "The handmade paper industry is dying, and this is our effort to revive it." Parekh set up a manufacturing unit for handmade paper more than a decade earlier, after being inspired from a course project she worked on paper bags. They are also into paper exports, though the retail store became a reality only last year.
After you have narrowed down on a paper design and colour, you can use it to make invitation cards, gift boxes, wine caskets, bags, files, notebooks, coasters, photo albums or frames, table mats and even curtains.
Samples of each are strewn around the store so that you get an idea of what the final product will look like.
Though these guys mainly get orders for bulk quantities and occasion-based products (mementos for a baby shower, for example), we were told that kids walk in to get supplies for their projects and others walk in to pick up gifts as well.
If you are confused about what paper to pick for your upcoming party invites, talk to these guys about your preferences and budget and they will help you figure it out. Paper prices range from Rs 45 per piece to as much as Rs 150. Our suggestion? Ask specifically for Parekh to help you. We reckoned her passion for handmade paper even on the other end of a phone line.
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At Le Papier Inc, Surya Kiron, next to Cumballa Hill Hospital, AK Marg, Kemps Corner.
Call 23825898/ 9833125898
Timing 10.30 am to
7.30 pm, closed on Sundays
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