Marbled Paper

Islamic Arts Magazine has a gorgeous site. While visiting, I saw Özden Aydin's beautiful ebru works, and I became curious about ebru.

What is ebru? It's paper marbling, done with paint in a container of water. It's very cool to watch it being made, so here's a demonstration by Bingul Sevimli.

The University Libraries at the University of Washington have a large Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection, with an informative list of patterns.

Some examples from the UW database:

Italian pattern, from the 19th century

French Curl on Romantic pattern, 19th century

French Curl on Turkish pattern
by Don Guyot

Old Dutch pattern, 20th c.

Turkish antique

Turkish combed
by Don Guyot

Links:
* A history of paper marbling
* A video of young students learning ebru
* Ebru school -- this site even explains how to make a marbling brush and comb
* Ebru information from Muslim Heritage.org
* Works by Ahmet Saral