With a little thought it would be easy to invent other fancy designs, but these are better applied to paper, as trimmed edges are more beautiful and effective when the marbling is of simpler design.
Fig. 47—Bouquet or peacock marbling.
Fig. 48—Eye marbling.
Large marble, called also Turkish marble, is produced as follows, using the same arrangement of colours. Only the first colour is laid on ringwise; all other colours are scattered in smaller drops from brushes. A darker colour is chosen for the last—brown, blue, olive, grey—to which is added a few more drops of gall and as much spirit of soap (spiritus saponatus), as sold by the druggists. This last colour is prepared in a larger and shallow basin. The largest brush is taken with the hand and dipped, shaken out a little, and then lightly knocked on the left hand so as to sprinkle the colour. The drops will fall in a dense shower, and, owing to their extra impetus, will drive together the preceding ones, and yet they will form the principal colour in the design. If it is desired to have veins of white in the design, a few drops of gall should be added to a little water in a bowl and used as any other colour; the same applies when using white in comb marbling. In a similar manner the so-called Kremser style of marbling is produced, but fewer colours are then used, generally only black and red, red and blue, brown and blue, green and red, at the end sprinkling a little of the strong principal colour to which, besides the spirit of soap, a drop of pure stone oil—not petroleum—from the chemist has been added. As last colour, blue grey (black with a little blue), brown, or grey is used.
Recently, a sort of paper termed Trichinal marble has been very prominent on the market. Black and light brown or red and light brown or black, red, and light brown, or white, are all sprinkled on with a brush, length (not cross) wise drawn through, and then grey with a few drops of turpentine (but very driving) is sprinkled on with a small brush. The single drops have ragged edges and produce a peculiar effect.
Thin-veined or French marbling is done upon the same ground, though it can also be done on a somewhat thinner body. The colours, however, are diluted by 50% water, and, consequently, more gall is added. As a rule, only two colours are used; blue, red; brown, blue; brown, green; black, red; black, blue. The first colour is laid on in rings with a brush and must be strong enough to spread over two-thirds the width of the trough; the second colour is sprinkled over with a little birch broom in drops that spread out to the size of a half-crown. Lastly, the so-called sprinkling-water is sprinkled over with one dash from the large brush as already explained. Sprinkling-water consists of two parts water and one part spirit of soap. The small veins must be driven quite close together and the eyes made by the sprinkling-water must not be larger than a small pea.
It should be observed that for this kind of marbling only the darker shade of red is to be taken, as the light carmine lake colour sinks and does not give a fine effect. India red is best of all.
The sprinkled colours are first tested with strips of paper; cuttings of clean note-paper are saved for this purpose. The edges of a book can be marbled only when the book is level or straight, therefore they must be marbled either before rounding or the book already rounded must be levelled by knocking it on a stone or metal slab. In all cases the marbling is done—both with papers and books—by dipping from one corner to the other diagonally opposite, but never deeper than just sufficient to take off the layer of colour. To prevent the colour from getting between the leaves, the edges are held between zinc plates, which must be dried each time after using. To make the paper or edges take the colours more readily and to prevent any subsequent running off, the edges are lightly washed down with alum water. This wash is made by boiling 100 g. of alum in 1/2 litre of water and using it solely for this work.