Take white wax and melt it in a pot; then with a brush throw some upon the edge of the book; when it is set, colour the edge with a sponge. Take the book and give it two or three smart knocks on the end of the press, when the wax will fly off and a beautiful white spot remain. This pattern may be much varied by using two or three colours or sprinkling the edge before the wax is thrown on, and, after it is, again with other colours.
Whiting mixed with water to a thick consistency will nearly answer the same purpose, and is less expensive than wax.
FANCY MARBLE.
Take a small portion of rose-pink, green, or any other vegetable colour, and well bray it on the slab with the muller, till reduced to a fine powder. Prepare a dish, or other vessel, large enough to admit the fore-edge of the book, and filled with clear water; then with the palette-knife mix a portion of the colours with spirits of wine, and convey with the knife some of the same to the middle of the vessel, and allow it to flow gradually on the surface of the water. The spirit of wine will cause it to spread in a diversity of pleasing forms, when the edge of the book must be dipped in the same manner as for marbling, and a very neat pattern will be produced at a trifling cost, as no more colour need be mixed than wanted at each time.
GOLD SPRINKLE.
After the edges of the book are stained with any of the colours above described, a good effect may be given by sprinkling with a gold liquid, made in the following manner:—Take a book of gold and half an ounce of honey, and rub them together in a mortar until they are very fine; then add half a pint of clear water and mix them well together. After the water clears, pour it off and put in more, till the honey is all extracted and nothing left but the gold; mix one grain of corrosive sublimate with a teaspoonful of spirits of wine, and when dissolved put the same, with a little thick gum-water, to the gold, and bottle it, always shaking it well before using. When dry, burnish the edge, and cover it with paper till the work is finished.
MARBLING.
Marbling is an art which consists in the production of certain patterns and effects by means of colours so prepared as to float upon a preparation of mucilaginous liquid, possessing certain antagonistic properties to the colours prepared for the purpose, and which colours, when so prepared, floated and formed into patterns upon the surface of the liquid, are taken off by laying thereon a piece or sheet of paper or dipping therein the smoothly-cut edges of a book.
It is a process which it is not very easy to describe; and yet, to any one beholding it for the first time, nothing appears more simple or easy of execution. Yet the difficulties are many; and the longer any one practises it, the more he will become convinced that there are many more discoveries to be made before the art can be brought to any thing like perfection or effects produced with that certainty which the workman could desire. In short, it may be said to be still in its infancy.
When the art was first discovered, and by whom, or in what city or country it was first practised, it is hardly possible to determine. It is supposed that we cannot go farther back for its origin than the beginning of the seventeenth century, and that Holland has the honour of being the birthplace of the art,—the old Dutch and some drawn and antique patterns, with stormont and other spots, being considered the most original.