When I was a young curios child, back in the 90’s, I have a strong memory of going through my Dad’s collection of paint tins and showing my little sister how some paints float on water. I only remember the pretty paper I made and how impressed my sister was, I don’t remember the mess and the dangerous lead in the enamel paints or the clean up which probably required turpentine.
The effect is known as marbling and is a process that many cultures have experimented with over the centuries. It was used for pages in the bible to show breaks in the stories or printed on the edges of papers of special large books to have a splash of colour when the books were closed.
The fun I had with the kids in my workshops didn’t involve any lead or turpentine, but interestingly it used a seaweed additive called Carrageenan which is used with food as a thickener. It’s a bit like gelatine and it increases waters viscosity so that paint can float on it. We also used a chemical in the paint which is synthetic gall (yes, gall, the same as the chemical created in a gall bladder) historically this was “Ox gall”. The gall makes the paint “fatty” and so it sits on the seaweed water.
Jacquard Marbling Starter KIT is the most high quality kit you can get, others are available but most of those are very simple and won’t adhere to different surfaces very well. When marbling fabrics the natural fibres need to be soaked in a “mordant solution” which is sodium carbonate and the jacquard kit comes with a small amount of the carrageenan, synthetic gall and the mordant solution.
Right now there are many people using this system to make beautiful, interesting and successful creations as the effect works on many surfaces such as hats, fans and even bottles.
In our workshop with the leading of one of the children we made tea-towels and continued the process with the student sewing the edges to hem the cotton drill towels. They looked really good and have not faded with use and washing. It was a very successful activity which we will do more and extend it to onto different surfaces.
