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Design

A Dyed Wool Cloak Made From Scratch in the Chinese Countryside by Li Ziqi

Li Ziqi (previously) presents pastoral glimpses into daily life on her farm in the countryside of China through her Youtube channel. She records common projects and necessities with precision and care, often focusing on the tasks needed to created a multi-course traditional meal or demonstrating the ways she prepares for the region’s harsh winters. In a video from earlier this year, Li walks her audience through the steps of knitting and dying a floor-length purple cloak with wool sourced from a neighboring farm. The five-minute film follows her journey across the snow-strewn mountains, watches as she inspects and brushes out the gathered wool, and features cameos by a few puppies and a very tiny lamb. You can view more snippets from her life on Facebook and Youtube. (via swissmiss)

Art

A Relaxing Video Demonstrates the Detailed Steps of Making Paper by Hand

Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi films her videos in the serene countryside of China, demonstrating step-by-step instructions for making traditional recipes such as fresh pomelo honey and Lanzhou beef noodles. In one of her most recent videos Li presents the days long process of traditional Chinese paper making, a process which can be traced back to the early years of the Han Dynasty sometime within the 2nd century BC.

The soothing video weaves together the necessary steps for making paper from scratch. During the video Li strictly adheres to the ancient process, using only basic tools such as fire and a mortar and pestle to transform the raw bark. After cutting down a few trees for the paper, Li then cuts and mashes the trunks into pulp, solidifying the consistency of the solution through several rounds of soaking and drying. You can watch the entirety of the demonstration above (along with a surprising twist ending), and view more of Li’s relaxing instructionals on her Youtube channel. (via Laughing Squid)

Design

A Visit Inside One of the Only Hand-crafted Globe Studios in the World

All images via Bellerby & Co. Globemakers

Long gone are the days when our first instinct is to migrate to a spinning globe to track the destinations around us or find a specific country. Now we have the power to digitally zoom in and out of the entire earth, utilizing mapping tools like Google Earth. The romanticism tied to these newer forms however, does not match the art of the ancient globe, the earliest dating back to the mid-2nd century B.C. Nowadays globes are either modern and massively produced, or antiquated models unsuited for casual browsing.

Frustrated by this lack of quality options when trying to find a globe as a present, Peter Bellerby started Bellerby & Co. Globemakers in order to produce globes that exist somewhere in-between the two options. “I did this as a direct result of looking, searching for a globe for my father for his 80th birthday, and I couldn’t find anything,” said Bellerby. “Initially my plan was to make one for him and maybe one for me if I had the budget.”

After spending tens of thousands of dollars more than he had originally predicted on the process, he decided to use what he’d learned to set up a company in 2008, eventually moving into their current location in Stoke Newington, London. The company employs a small team of makers that fastidiously work in an open environment with large windows, nestled between test sheets of watercolor paints and hanging strips of paper twirling from clothes pins. To master the process of applying paper to the sphere globes (called “goring”) can take up to a year or more.

“It’s been something that’s been an incredible challenge. The whole design process, the whole way of making anything using a sphere at its base, at its centerpiece is fraught with different problems and issues because you are multiplying every error by pi,” said Bellerby.

Bellerby & Co. Globemakers’ globes have been featured in Hollywood movies and BBC productions as well as used in installations by established artists. The company has also had support from the Royal Geographic Society and was able to host their first ever globe exhibition in 2012. To see more images of the daily life at the Bellerby & Co. studio, visit the company’s Instagram or their blog. (via My Modern Met)

Animation Illustration

Handmade Kraft Paper Animations by Nancy Liang

From time to time we love to stop and marvel at the mathematical wizardry of artists and designers who make GIFs with code, but Sydney-based illustrator Nancy Liang takes an old-school approach with her imaginative scenes made almost entirely by hand. There isn’t a single element in her animations that doesn’t begin as a physical drawing or object. Liang works mostly with kraft paper cutouts and pencil drawings, all of which is carefully planned in copious sketches before each element is scanned and animated in Photoshop. Seen here are a few of her most recent pieces, you can see more on her Tumblr: Over the Moon.