Research: Marbling

Marbling was supposedly discovered by a member of the Japanese royal family during the twelfth century, and is said to have been discovered by accident when attempting to preserve the image of some paint that was floating atop of some water. This was known as ‘suminagashi’ or ‘floating ink’. According to suminagashi.com, this art is the oldest known form of marbling, and was discovered in China. Used by Shinto Priest, this was a form or adornment for documents and calligraphy art, it would seem. 

3 Centuries later, ‘Erdu’, a similar marbling technique would be used by Turkish artists. 

It’s depiction of fluidity has seen it connotate to a variety of subjects, but most often is sold in the modern day as a hobby-craft for adorning items with texture, people use it to create cards, even picture frames, as seen in the book ‘Decorative Marbling’ By Solveig Stone.

Attempts to find art pieces that incorporate it prominently, tend to lead to artists that use it solely, and that experiment with its properties, more than incorporating it into other mediums. Artists such as Julia Genet, an artist from Paris, who works with creating marbled paper and then crafting things out of the paper to sell, making for wholly unique items/ wrapping paper for each client. 

Mustafa Düzgünman was a Turkish artist, born in the 1920s that created shapes in the ink during the process of the marble, using the same principles of fluid art that is practised by barista now, to cause a fluid to sit in a constructed shape, in Düzgünman’s work this were botanical, natural shapes, often flowers, grass, or leaves. This to me is particularly striking, with tying motifs such as using water, and its fluidity being a natural process of physics, to depict natural constructions.