Marbled Paper
One of the elements of the handmade Book of the Erinyes will be the use of marbled paper — sometimes on the outside cover, and sometimes on the endpapers/inside cover.
As with all the parts of the book, I’m determined to make it all myself, so I bought myself a copy of Techniques for Marbleizing Paper by Gabriele Grünebaum.
First I made an alum solution, using 6 teaspoons of Alum in 450ml of water. The alum solution works as a mordant — it fixes the marbling colours onto the surface of the paper. After bringing the solution to the boil then letting it cool, I sponged it liberally onto a number of sheets of paper then left them overnight to dry.
The next day I prepared the marbling size, using 6 teaspoons of Carragheen Moss Powder dissolved in 4 pints of hand-hot water, and left it to cool before starting some experiments, following the patterns in Gabriele Grünebaum’s book.
I decided to use Acrylic Inks — they don’t require any dispersing agent to be added for marbling, and the pigments are strong enough to retain a good strong colour even when spread across the surface of the size. The ones I bought come with pipettes in the lids of the bottles, which made the process even easier.
I was fairly pleased with the results, but I’m obviously going to have to get a lot more practice to control the process.
Nonpareil pattern:
Nonpareil pattern:
Wavy Combed:
Tags: marbing, marbleizing, paper
November 20th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Marbling paper is a very satisfactory pastime. We teachers can get kids to do it on the cheap, floating gloss housepaint or oilpaint mixed with white spirit onto water. We use mainly blue, then the child makes an illustration on a separarate sheet, perhaps themselves swimming, then cuts it out and pastes it on top. Looks good! a technique used by Roger Dean in the 70s.
Another way is to float oily colours on water. Use an eye-dropper. Drop soapy water in the middle. The soap destroys the surface tension and immediately a cirular hole appears in the pattern. By carefully adding more oily paint and more soap, a pattern of circles and rings can be made which is cooli-o.