From a website on inkjet paper:

"Hand
But, quite often, if you take two papers of the same surface weight, you will notice that they do not feel the same at all. This overall feeling is called the hand of the paper.

This is the firmness of the paper that not only comes from the quantity of cellulosic fibers (or plastic) but from:

its rigidity
its thickness
its inertia when moved
the sound it makes when handled
As a matter of fact, a paper may be very bulky and then thicker for the same surface weight. It is not immeditely perceptible, but a print house (and you) can use this characteristic to thicken a book or a booklet without changing neither the number of pages nor the overall mass of the book."

"Hand" is the standared printing and paper industry term. I worked in a stationery engraving firm in the 1970s and this is the term we used. It may be less used today, but it is still in use in English in this way.



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Note added at 5 hrs (2009-12-16 13:52:57 GMT)
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Here is one more:

"We want every book that comes out under the Olympian Publishing heading to be more than just a pile of papers- we focus on the hand of the paper, the weight, the surface, the translucence, and compare these factors to the material soon-to-be impressed onto their surface. We try to find print houses that will do things that they might not have been asked to do in a hundred years or so, and pay whatever it costs to retool their setups to make something old new again."

http://centuryguild.wordpress.com/