Welcome to the secret world of marbling

The art of paper marbling was brought from Turkey to Europe in the 1600s. The beautiful paper was often used to decorate the end sheets of finely bound books in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To make marbled paper, the artist drops paint onto thickened water and transfers the resulting pattern onto a piece of paper or silk. The paint may only be transferred once. The fluid dynamics of the process ensure that no two sheets of marbled paper are ever exactly the same.