A long time ago, The Nomadic Press was hired to produce a letterpress book. The project called for the use of hand set metal type, wood engraved illustrations and hand binding techniques. But the tricky part was the use of marbleized paper for the end sheets.

Because the edition number was fairly large, it turned out that it was nearly impossible to get a quantity of marbled sheets made to spec.

So I learned to marble paper.

I gotta’ tell you that there are many things in this world that have been intentionally invented by people who have combined chemicals and processes with an eye open to a specific end result. Paper marbleing is not one of them. Ox gall (the bile of an ox) is used to spread pigments onto the surface of a mixture of water and carragheenan (a seaweed derivative used widely today to thicken milkshakes). The pigments are then spotted, swirled and combed into complex patterns before being transfered to sheets of paper that have been coated with alum.

Whew.

The first time that somebody did all this had to be some sort of freakish accident. Now it is simply beautiful.