ruttlin results

[Nicolas Ward]

On 2/26/07, lindafowens at netzero.net <lindafowens at netzero.net> wrote:
> I used to do marbling--or marbleizing, as we called it--when I was a grad
> student in art at URI  (non-degree, so I could use it as a studio). I often
> led workshops in marbleizing, especially a few weeks before exams, when
> everyone else was tense.  You marble paper or cloth or even your body by
> floating an oil-based ink on water, or by floating water-based dyes on some
> sort of methyl cellulose, I think. At URI we used the former method to use
> up old lithography ink and often to overlay not-so-spectacular prints.  It
> can be messy, and for years, kids marbled their hands and printed them on
> lockers, etc.  It's also fumacious  (is that a word?), so a fan or vent is
> helpful.  Professionally, special combs are used, but we didn't have any, so
> we used sticks or brushes, hands, old plastic combs, etc to roil the water
> into beautiful patterns--what you see is what you get when you lay the paper
> on the water and roll it off.  Often the professional papers are used as end
> papers in expensive books.  Linda

Recently, when purchasing a blank journal for my sister, a "marbled"
cover was a non-trivial premium.

--Nick

-- 
Nicolas Ward
617.230.9279

ultranurd at gmail.com
http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~nward/

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo."
-- Enoch Root, The Confusion, by Neal Stephenson