National Workshop for Handmade Paper, Ohrid

The National Workshop for Handmade Paper preserves the traditional craft of paper making using techniques based on ancient Chinese methods. Paper is known to have been produced in China as early as the 2nd century BC, although the development of an improved paper making process is traditionally associated with Cai Lun in AD 105. At the Ohrid workshop, sheets are still produced largely by hand, with pulp formed, pressed, and dried using traditional methods.

One of the workshop’s most interesting features is a working replica of a 15th-century Gutenberg-style printing press. Visitors can see it used to print historical texts, religious images, and scenes of Ohrid onto the handmade paper. Although sometimes described in tourism literature as one of only two such replicas in the world, numerous reconstructed Gutenberg presses exist elsewhere.

Visitors can watch demonstrations of both paper making and traditional printing, making this small workshop-museum an unusually hands-on introduction to two crafts that transformed the spread of knowledge. Handmade prints, notebooks, cards, and other paper products are also available for purchase.

Ohrid itself has a documented paper making tradition dating to the second half of the 16th century. According to local tradition, paper was then produced at the Monastery of Saint Naum, about 28 kilometers south of Ohrid, primarily for the monastery’s own needs. The present National Workshop, established in 2002, revives that tradition and gives visitors a chance to see how paper and printed images were once produced by hand.