Marbles
Sue Bovington, UK
| The marbled
endpapers in old books have always fascinated me. The varied and
intricate patterns, with their rich colour combinations remind
me of second-hand book shops, old-fashioned libraries and hand
written ledgers. Starting work as a bank clerk in 1971, I was
amazed to see the huge ledgers still in use in some departments.
Many were larger than A2 in size, with endpapers that looked like
soft diagonal folds of cloth; a ‘shifted’ wave pattern
called Spanish marbling. A few years ago I learned how to marble paper to use in my own artistic practice, not as endpapers, but for the covers of my handmade books. I have reversed the traditional use of marbled paper; my books always have plain endpapers. These bookmarks are recent experiments with colour and pattern. Using acrylic paint, floated on water mixed with powdered Carragheen Moss seaweed, they are printed on Zerkal Ingres Laid 90gsm paper, and attached to 230gsm card. The patterns used are, Bouquet, Cascade, Chevron, Nonpareil, Spanish and Zebra.  susanbovington@hotmail.comback |