Marbling is the art of creating
colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing color pigments on a pan of oily
water and then transforming this pattern to paper. The special tools of the
trade are brushes of horsehair bound to straight rose twigs, a deep tray made
of unknotted pinewood, natural earth pigments, cattle gall and tragacanth. It
is believed to be invented in the thirteenth century Turkistan. This decorative
art then spread to China, India and Persia and Anatolia. Seljuk and Ottoman
calligraphers and artists used marbling to decorate books, imperial decrees,
official correspondence and documents. New forms and techniques were perfected
in the process and Turkey remained the center of marbling for many centuries.
Up until the 1920's, marblers had workshops in the Beyazit district of
Istanbul, creating for both the local and European market, where it is known as
Turkish marble paper.
The Art of Marbling
Following its acceptance of the
Islamic faith, the Turkish nation so bound itself to that religion that there
was not another on earth which had so devoted its blood in the name of God.
Becoming on the one hand the Sword
of Islam and conquering countries in God's name, at the same time, it dedicated
nearly all its art to the most beautiful expression of the pine; for the most
part in its music, in its architecture, in its calligraphy, and in its
decorative arts, the Turkish nation dealt with that which was mystical. Indeed,
quite a few branches of the arts were developed in religious lodges, yet out of
the humbleness afforded by dervish training no signatures are to be seen below
them.
Just as in the case of the
development of the art of Turkish architecture, where the primary element was
the architecture of the mosque and this art gave life to a great number of
other branches of the arts such as tile making, marble working, glass making,
wood carving, and mother of pearl inlaying, so too did the Turks accept the
Arabic alphabet (which gained importance with the Koran) as another main branch
of the arts, and they developed six separate styles.
Together with these six styles of
writing developed under the heading of the art of calligraphy, holy verses and
traditions were worked into all media from paper to cardboard, and from large
cloth panels to marble, wood, tile, and metal. Decorators framed these writings
with beautiful figures, gilders gilded them, decorated them, adorned them. It
was in this way that subsidiary branches of art arose which embellished the art
of calligraphy, and at the head of these come the arts of, illumination, ornamentation,
marbling, and bookbinding.
The art of marbling, our subject
here then, is the art of obtaining the paper dyed in a myriad of colors which
was used for decoration in the art known as calligraphy. Coming over the Silk
Road to Anatolia from the Turks ancient homeland, the art set out from Bukhara
in Turkestan, picked up its name (ebru) in Iran, and settled in Anatolia. Was
the name it acquired from Farsi ebri on
account of its cloud-like appearance? Or was it ab-ru because it was created on water in a
vessel? This is not very clear. In the West however this art is referred to as
"Turkish marbled Paper".
In our museums and in private
collections one finds examples of paper marbling which go back as far as 450
years from the present day. A determination of date is possible in the case of
marbled paper on which something has been written, and for this reason one
perhaps may be able to determine the name of the calligrapher. The name of the
artist doing the marbling however remains unknown. The earliest marbling artist
whose name has been determined to date is that of one with the by-name
"Sebek", mention of which is made in the Tertib-I Risale-i Ebri
("Organised Treatise on Marbling"), which is the oldest document
relating the methods and constituents of marbling, as published by Mr. Ugur
Derman in his book on the art of marbling. In this treatise, which was written
in A.H. 1017 (1608), mention is made of this artist with the entreaty "God
Grant Him Rest", and it is not even known how long it was before the
treatise was written that the artist lived. In a manuscript copy of the work of
the poet Fuzuli, Hadikat-üs Süeda ("Garden of Delights") which came
into my possession through the offices of Mr. Kemal Elker, a little more light
is thrown on the subject in three aspects:
First, on the title page of the book
the phrase Ma Sebek Mehmed Ebrisi is added in red ink after the designation of
the title Hadikat-üs Süeda of the work. From this formulation, the meaning of
which is "With Marbling by Sebek Mehmet", we learn that the
calligrapher employed this marbled paper among the pages when copying the book,
and more important, that the name of this artist with the by-name
"Sebek" was "Mehmet".
Second, the final page of the book
ends "Katib-ül harf Ahmet Hasan yeniçer-i korucuyan-i dergâh-i âli fi
beldet ül Trablus Sam fi zeman defterdar Mehmet efendi. Sene 1004. "This
volume was written by Ahmed son of Hasan. Gaurd in the Janissary corps when
Mehmet Efendi was Director of Finance in Trablus Syria. Year: 1004".
The importance of the date here is
the fact that it indicates that the marbling of Sebek Mehmet Efendi were in use
in A.H. 1004 (1595). Most probably the artist himself was still alive at the
time.
Third, three marbling by Sebek
Mehmed Efendi were used in the book, and it is these which are most important
from the standpoint of light they cast on the history of art and of marbling.
These are of the grayish-white type known as "Porphyry Marbling", and
resemble veined marble. It may be regarded as the grandfather of the so-called
"Floral Marbling", which is a grayish-yellow. The red and blue
marbling on the other hand is of a type which is intermediary to the
"Passion Flower" and "Tidal" types of marbling. All three
examples show that Mehmet Efendi was a marbler of advanced skill. Indeed, the
"Light Marbling", which was used to be written upon is the type
requiring the greatest skill in this art.
The first person whose name was
given to his style of marbling in this art was Mehmed Efendi, a preacher at
Ayasofya Mosque who lived around 1770 and 1773. By means of a few nested motifs
done in the form of flowers or stars, a new style was born in the art of
marbling. This style, called Hatip Ebrusu ("Preacher's Marbling") was
the next advance after Sebek Mehmed Efendi in the search for flowers in the art
of marbling, and we may regard this as being the father of "Floral
Marbling".
The Chain of Tradition
Like all the classical Ottoman arts,
the art of marbling was one which was not taught by writing or explanation, but
rather was a branch of art in which students were trained by means of the
"master/apprentice" system. The ability to turn out marbling which
was truly beautiful was something of which only artists who had devoted years
-and even their lives- to this art could be worthy.
Nevertheless, for one reason or
another, this deep-rooted Turkish art has lost its historical prevalence, and
has only managed to survive down to the present day thanks to the last four
links in the master/apprentice chain of which we shall now make mention.
Sadik Efendi from Bukhara (?-1846),
sheik of the Uzbek Lodge in Üsküdar, himself learned the art of marbling in
Bukhara, and taught it to his son, Edhem Efendi, who subsequently became sheik
of the same lodge. This man of science, who was a master of many branches of
the arts and sciences, taught the art of marbling to Necmettin Okyay, a
calligrapher, gilder, and bookbinder who managed to combine a large number of
arts in a single personality.
Necmettin Okyay (1883-1976) turned
out a considerable number of exquisite marblings in addition to which he opened
a new age in the style of "Floral Marbling" which until then had
undergone much primitive experimentation yet had failed to achieve anything
specific in form. It was he who produced marblings which resulted in
near-depictions of tulips, daisies, hyacinths, poppies, carnations, pansies,
and rosebuds. The Floral Marblings of this style began to be referred to a
"Necmettin Marbling". At last, marbling was no longer a colored piece
or paper adorning a piece of writing: it had now been raised to the level of a
work of art in and of itself and worthy of its own study.
Notwithstanding the large number of
students which he trained, Mustafa Düzgünman, is the sole name in the art of
marbling today. He has produced exquisite works both in the floral marbling
instituted by his teacher (master) Necmettin Efendi, and at the same time in
all the other types of marbling as well. Born in 1920, Düzgünman still pursues
his art today.
Performance of the Art
Marbling begins first with the
dissolving in water of tragacanth, a white material derived from a plant which
grows in Anatolia. A type of gum, tragacanth gives the water a degree of
viscosity. A vessel with the approximate dimensions of the paper to be marbled
is filled with this liquid to depth of about six centimeters. At the same time,
earth-based dyes in various colors are thoroughly crushed with a specially-shaped
pestle on a marble slab and are reduced to powder. Each of these dyes is placed
in a separate glass jar and mixed with a small amount of water. Into each is
added five ten drops of ox bile (previously boiled to prevent it from
spoiling). When added to the water of the dyes, this material spreads on the
surface (not unlike olive oil) and it ensures that the dyes superimposed on one
another do not become mixed. These liquefied dyes are removed from their jars
one after another by means of special coarse horsehair brushes and sprinkled
onto the tragacanth solution. Each of the dyes added spread one onto the other
producing attractive figures. With the marbling vessel, a sheet of an
appropriate absorbent paper with exactly the same dimensions as the vessel is placed,
and an image of the all the dyes on the surface of the water is absorbed by the
paper. Next the paper is removed and left to dry, while the vessel is ready for
another marbling. In this way, hundreds of marblings may be made, but with time
the dyes in the vessel slowly become grainy, at this point, dyes (mostly blue
ones) prepared with turbot bile rather than ox bile are added in the exact
center of the vessel until they have spread over the entire surface. From this
one obtains the final output of the vessel: "Sand Marbling" or
"Fishbone Marbling".
If no intervention is made in the
dyes sprinkled into the vessel on the other hard, an antique style of marbling
known as "Oversized Marbling" is obtained. Nevertheless, this may be
given form by means of a thin piece of wire (or a needle), producing such types
of marbling known as "Tidal", "Passion Flower", and
"Nightingale's Nest". If a special comb studded with nails is dragged
through the sprinkled dyes, the result is "Serrated Marbling".
To produce floral marbling, a
light-colored ground is prepared as "Oversized Marbling", after which
the green dye which has been added is drawn and stretched by means of a needle
-almost as if it were rubber- to provide the shapes of stems and leaves. The
colors which will serve as the blossom on the upper end of the stem are added
in drops and given shape. From here on, the beauty of the flower is dependent
upon the artist's skill.
Instead of marbling which decorates
the edges of a piece of writing, there is also a style which assumes the form
of the calligraphy itself. In this, the dyes sprinkled in the vessel are
brought into harmony on the one hand, while on the other, a calligrapher writes
out the work on a piece of blank marbling paper using a reed pen dipped in glue
rather than in ink. Written in glue, this calligraphy is invisible when dried,
but when immersed in the vessel, these parts do not absorb the dyes, and the
white areas on the marbled paper are revealed. This is known as "Written
Marbling". Using the same technique, a rectangular section in the center
of a light-marbled piece of paper is coated in glue, and then the paper is
immersed in a vessel in which darker-colored dyes are predominant. This
produces Akkase Ebru (literally, "two-toned marbling") with the
lighter-colored marbling in the center, on which something may be written.
Nowadays, at a time when the art of
calligraphy has lost its currency, the art of marbling, like a painting,
caresses the eye all on its own in a variety of compositions. Used in the
production of exquisite bookbinding, the art of marbling has also been extended
to use as an element of decoration on tiles by the architect Himmi Senalp.
Another artist whose work is appreciated is that of our colleague and marbler
Nedim Sönmez, who has brought off what may be styled as a
"revolution" in the art of marbling, having achieved a degree of
success previously unattained in the matter of "pictorial marbling"
or "pictures with marbling". This marbling work, carried out jointly
with his wife Yvonne, acts as a short of ambassador in representation of our
country in a great number of exhibitions abroad.
Note: In the preparation of this article, use was also made of the book Türk Sanatında Ebru, written by Mr. M. Ugur Derman and the sole work on this subject.
Ebrî : cloudAbrû : water
surface
Source: Antika, The Turkish Journal Of Collectable
Art, May1986 Issue:14
By : Isik Yazan
Reference: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of
the Republic of Turkey
Ebru sites:
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