Marbling in Florence by Mary Hoffman

This could so easily degenerate into a post about writers and stationery lust. How many of us own something like the above - a delicious notebook bound in "Carta Marmorizzata," marbled paper, just waiting for the "right" or at least "good enough" ideas for a perfect book?

Marbled paper is a rather generic term: there are examples that look far more like actual marble but it's the "peacock feather" design, as above, that always attracts me.

If you'd asked me, I would have said that the technique of marbling paper had been born in Florence, or at least Tuscany. But it turns out to have come from the country we now call Turkey and also Persia and India. And this year for the first time I watched some being made.

I was in Florence in April, teaching on Julie Foster Hedlund's Writer's Renaissance programme, which I've written about elsewhere. Julie had arranged to visit a shop called Alberto Cozzi, now run by Riccardo Luci, who was going to make some marbled paper on a Saturday afternoon. She kindly invited me to join her and we then watched a demonstration of a technique that goes back some four hundred years. Riccardo is the fourth generation in his family to carry it out and he does it expertly.

These images of marblers and their equipment date from 18th century France, by which time the art had been well established for over a hundred years. And nothing much has changed in the centuries since.

You start with a shallow tray filled with liquid; these days it is usually a size made from algae or some other form of seaweed - enough to make it a viscous carrier for the paint. Using a paintbrush to flick it, our marbler Riccardo dotted many colours on to the size.

He had a vast range of colours laid out and prepared on the bench to his right. How he chooses what to use and in what order comes from long experience and - who knows? - perhaps something in his DNA.

At this stage, I couldn't tell how this seemingly random collection of blobs could turn into the exquisite marbled paper we are familiar with. Riccardo added more sparingly smaller blobs of gold and silver.

Only when he was satisfied with the arrangement of colours did he drag a comb through them and I could see some sort of pattern emerge. But there was another pass to come. I don't know what the technical term is but Julie and I decided that the side-to-side motion with the comb must be "wiggling."

And there they were! The characteristic peacock feathering of the classic Florentine marbled paper.



Now he was ready for the paper.

It takes a very steady hand and a cool head to do this bit!

And here is the end result. All shiny and wet. It will need to be pegged on a line to dry but here it is lying on a board.

You can see all the different colours and possibly even pick out the odd splashes of silver and gold.

It takes hours for the paper to dry and then it is stored flat in some narrow wooden shelves. I went back the next day to collect this piece, which had been made specially for Julie, and to buy a piece for myself. Each one is a unique work of art.

All the colours have to be swept out of the tray with another device to clean the size before another set can be applied. One mixture of size will produce up to twenty-five sheets of marbled paper.

The whole experience got me thinking about the traditional arts and crafts that have been handed down through the generations. I've recently been making things for my new granddaughter by knitting and crochet, both of which I must have learned how to do from my mother, though I have no recollections of any formal lessons. Knitting has a very long history, dating back to the first millennium in Egypt but crochet is a bit of a upstart, found only in the 19th century in Europe.

Some of the same skills are involved: choosing colours, using traditional designs and patterns.

How every stitch - as with every blob of paint above - carries forward a little bit of history!

Do you have a story about traditional crafts handed down through the generations?