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Paper marbling is a method of Aqueous solution surface design, which can produce patterns similar to smooth marble or other kinds of stone. The patterns are the result of color floated on either plain water or a Viscosity solution known as sizing, and then carefully transferred to an absorbent surface, such as paper or fabric. Through several centuries, people have applied marbled materials to a variety of surfaces. It is often employed as a writing surface for calligraphy, and especially book covers and endpapers in bookbinding and stationery. Part of its appeal is that each print is a unique monotype.
In the 19th century, the Kyoto-based Japanese people master Tokutaro Yagi developed an alternative method that employed a split piece of bamboo to gently stir the colors, resulting in concentric spiral designs. A sheet of washi paper is then carefully laid onto the water surface to capture the floating design. The paper, which is often made of (Paper Mulberry), must be Sizing and strong enough to withstand being immersed in water without tearing.
Another method of marbling more familiar to Europeans and Americans is made on the surface of a viscous mucilage, known as size or sizing in English. While this method is often referred to as "Turkey marbling" in English and called ebru in modern Turkish language, ethnic Turkic peoples were not the only practitioners of the art, as Persian people, Tajiks, and people of origin also made these papers. The use of the term Turkish by Europeans is most likely due to both the fact that many first encountered the art in Istanbul, as well as essentialist references to all as Turks, much as Europeans were referred to as Firengi in Turkish language and Persian language, which literally means Franks.
Historic forms of marbling used both organic and inorganic pigments mixed with water for colors, and sizes were traditionally made from gum tragacanth ( Astragalus spp.), gum karaya, guar gum, fenugreek ( Trigonella foenum-graecum), fleabane, linseed, and psyllium. Since the late 19th century, a boiled extract of the carrageenan-rich alga known as Irish moss ( Chondrus crispus), has been employed for sizing. Today, many marblers use powdered carrageenan extracted from various seaweeds. Another plant-derived mucilage is made from sodium alginate. In recent years, a synthetic size made from hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, a common ingredient in instant wallpaper paste, is often used as a size for floating Acrylic paint and .
In the size-based method, colors made from pigments are mixed with a surfactant such as ox gall. Sometimes, oil or turpentine may be added to a color, to achieve special effects. The colors are then spattered or dropped onto the size, one color after another until there is a dense pattern of several colors. Straw from the broom corn was used to make a kind of whisk for sprinkling the paint, or horsehair to create a kind of drop-brush. Each successive layer of pigment spreads slightly less than the last, and the colors may require additional surfactant to float and uniformly expand. Once the colors are laid down, various tools and implements such as rakes, combs, and styluses are often used in a series of movements to create more intricate designs.
Cobb paper or cloth is often beforehand with aluminium sulfate (alum) and gently laid onto the floating colors (although methods such as Turkish ebru and Japanese do not require mordanting). The colors are thereby transferred and adhered to the surface of the paper or material. The paper or material is then carefully lifted off the size and hung up to dry. Some marblers gently drag the paper over a rod to draw off the excess size. If necessary, excess bleeding colors and sizing can be rinsed off, and then the paper or fabric is allowed to dry. After the print is made, any color residues remaining on the size are carefully skimmed off of the surface, in order to clear it before starting a new pattern.
Contemporary marblers employ a variety of modern materials, some in place of or in combination with the more traditional ones. A wide variety of colors are used today in place of the historic pigment colors. Plastic broom straw can be used instead of broom corn, as well as bamboo sticks, plastic pipettes, and eye droppers to drop the colors on the surface of the size. Ox gall is still commonly used as a surfactant for watercolors and gouache, but synthetic surfactants are used in conjunction with Acrylic paint, PVA, and Oil paint paints.
This paper was made by dragging a piece of paper through a fermented flour paste mixed with various colors, creating a free and irregular design. A second type was made with a paste prepared from honey locust pods, mixed with croton oil, and thinned with water. Presumably, both black and colored inks were employed. Ginger, possibly in the form of an oil or extract, was used to disperse the colors, or “scatter” them, according to the interpretation given by T.H. Tsien. The colors were said to gather together when a hair-brush was beaten over the design, as dandruff particles was applied to the design by beating a hairbrush over top. The finished designs, which were thought to resemble human figures, clouds, or flying birds, were then transferred to the surface of a sheet of paper. An example of paper decorated with floating ink has never been found in China. Whether or not the above methods employed floating colors remains to be determined (Tsien 94–5).
Su Yijian was an Imperial scholar-official and served as the chief of the Hanlin Academy from about 985–993 CE. He compiled the work from a wide variety of earlier sources and was familiar with the subject, given his profession. Yet it is important to note that it is uncertain how personally acquainted he was with the various methods for making decorative papers that he compiled. He most likely reported information given to him, without having a full understanding of the methods used. His original sources may have predated him by several centuries. Not only is it necessary to identify the original source to attribute a firm date for the information, but also the account remains uncorroborated due to a lack of any surviving physical evidence of marbling in Chinese manuscripts.
In contrast, , which means 'floating ink' in Japanese, appears to be the earliest form of marbling during the 12th-century Sanjuurokuninshuu 2=三十六人集, located in Nishihonganji 2=西本願寺, Kyoto. Author Einen Miura states that the oldest reference to papers are in the waka poems of Shigeharu, (825–880 CE), a son of the famed Heian-era poet Narihira (Muira 14) in the Kokin Wakashū, but the verse has not been identified and even if found, it may be spurious. Various claims have been made regarding the origins of . Some think that may have derived from an early form of ink divination (encromancy). Another theory is that the process may have derived from a form of popular entertainment at the time, in which a freshly painted Sumi painting was immersed into water, and the ink slowly dispersed from the paper and rose to the surface, forming curious designs, but no physical evidence supporting these allegations has ever been identified.
According to legend, Jizemon Hiroba is credited as the inventor of . It is said that he felt divinely inspired to make paper after he offered spiritual devotions at the Kasuga Shrine in Nara Prefecture. He then wandered the country looking for the best water with which to make his papers. He arrived in Echizen, Fukui Prefecture where he found the water especially conducive to making . He settled there, and his family carried on with the tradition to this day. The Hiroba family claims to have made this form of marbled paper since 1151 CE for 55 generations (Narita, 14).
The art first emerged and evolved during the long 16th century in Iran and Transoxiana then spread to the Ottoman Empire, as well as Mughal Empire and the Deccan Sultanates in India. Within these regions, various methods emerged in which colors were made to float on the surface of a bath of viscous liquid mucilage or Sizing, made from various plants including fenugreek seed, onion, gum tragacanth ( astragalus) and salep (the roots of Orchis mascula), among others.
A pair of leaves purported to be the earliest examples of this paper, preserved in the Kronos collection, bears rudimentary droplet-motifs. One of the sheets bears an accession notation on the reverse stating "These abris are rare" (یاد داشت این ابریهای نادره است) and adds that it was "among the gifts from Iran" to the royal library of Ghiyath Shah, the ruler of the Malwa Sultanate, dated Hijri year 1 Dhu al-Hijjah 901/11 August 1496 of the Common Era.
Approximately a century later, a technically advanced approach using finely prepared mineral and organic pigments and combs to manipulate the floating colors resulted in comparatively elaborate, intricate, and mesmerizing overall designs. Both literary and physical evidence suggests that before 1600, a Safavid-era émigré to India named Muḥammad Ṭāhir developed many of these innovations. Later that century, Indian marblers combined the abri technique with stencil and resist masking methods to create Indian miniature, attributed to the Deccan sultanates and especially the city of Bijapur in particular, during the Adil Shahi dynasty in the 17th century.
The earliest examples of Ottoman marbled paper may be the margins attached to a cut paper découpage manuscript of the Hâlnâma (حالنامه) by the poet Arifi (popularly known as the Gû-yi Çevgân 'Ball) completed by Mehmed bin Gazanfer in 1539–40. Recipes ascribed to one early master by the name of Shebek, appear posthumously in the earliest, anonymously compiled Ottoman miscellany on the art known as the Tertîb-i Risâle-'i Ebrî (ترتیبِ رسالۀ ابری, 'An Arrangement of a Treatise on Ebrî'), dated on the basis of internal evidence to after 1615. Many in Turkey attribute another famous 18th-century master Hatip Mehmed Efendi (died 1773) with developing motif and perhaps early floral designs and refer to them as "Hatip" designs.
The current Turkish tradition of ebru dates to the mid-19th century, with a series of masters associated with a branch of the Naqshbandi Sufi order based at what is known as the Özbekler Tekkesi (Lodge of the Uzbeks), located in Sultantepe, near Üsküdar. The founder of this line, Sadık Effendi (died 1846) allegedly first learned the art in Bukhara and brought it to Istanbul, then taught it to his sons Edhem and Salıh. Based upon this later practice, many Turkish marblers assert that Sufis practiced the art for centuries; however, little evidence supports this claim. Sadık's son Edhem Effendi (died 1904) manufactured papers as a kind of cottage industry for the tekke, to supply Istanbul's burgeoning printing industry with the paper, purportedly tied into bundles and sold by weight. Many of his papers feature neftli designs made with turpentine, analogous to what English-speaking marblers refer to as the stormont pattern.
The premier student of Edhem Efendi, Necmeddin Okyay (1885–1976), first taught the art at the Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul. He famously innovated elaborate floral designs, in addition to yazılı ebru , a method of writing traditional calligraphy using a gum arabic resist masking applied before marbling the sheet. Okyay's premier student, Mustafa Düzgünman (1920–1990), taught many contemporary marblers in Turkey today. He codified the traditional repertoire of patterns, to which he only added a floral daisy design, after the manner of his teacher.
The methods of marbling attracted the curiosity of intellectuals, philosophers, and scientists. Gerhard ter Brugghen published the earliest European technical account, written in Dutch, in his Verlichtery kunst-boeck in Amsterdam in 1616, while the first German account was written by Daniel Schwenter, published posthumously in his Delicæ Physico-Mathematicæ in 1671 (Benson, "Curious Colors", 284; Wolfe, 16). Athanasius Kircher published a Latin account in Ars Magna Lucis et Umbræ in Rome in 1646, widely disseminated knowledge of the art throughout Europe. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert published a thorough overview of the art with illustrations of marblers at work together with images of the tools of the trade in their Encyclopédie.
Elena Laura Jakobi is responsible for a conceptual history study of the terms and variants used to describe marbled paper between 1550 and 1800. The genesis, development, and differentiation of the terms are documented in German, Dutch, French, Italian, and Latin using 109 written sources.Elena Laura Jakobi: Wie Wolken, Marmor und Meer. Begriffsgenese, Entwicklung und Differenzierung Marmorpapiere beschreibender Termini (1550-1800). Masterarbeit. Universität Wien, Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Masterstudium Kunstgeschichte, Wien 2024. Online [1], p. 90.
In 1695, the Bank of England employed partially marbled papers for several weeks until it discovered that William Chaloner had successfully forged similar notes (Benson, "Curious Colors", 289–294). Nevertheless, the Bank continued to issued partially marbled until the 1810s (Benson, "Curious Colors", 301–302). In 1731, English marbler Samuel Pope obtained a Letters patent for security marbling, claiming that he invented the process, then sued his competitors for infringement; however, those he accused exposed him for patent fraud (Benson, "Curious Colors", 294–301). Benjamin Franklin obtained English marbled security papers employed for printing Continental Congress $20 banknote in 1775, as well as to support the American Revolutionary War, threepence notes issued during the Copper Panic of 1789, as well as his own personal (Benson, "Curious Colors", 302–307).
Another adaptation called body marbling has emerged at public events and festivals, applied with non-toxic, water-based neon or ultraviolet reactive paints.
== Examples ==
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Marbled paper (archived 2019) by Joel Silver, from Nov./Dec. 2005 issue of Fine Books magazine
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