Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.17351

    Method of making marbled paper

    Date
    1662
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p128
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 321mm
    width (page): 200mm
    Subject
    Description
    Figures from John Evelyn's paper (Cl.P/3i/4/002) on how to make marbled paper.

    Fig. 1 shows a pointed stick with which the liquid, sprinkled with several colours, is mixed.
    Fig. 2 indicates how the pointed stick should be moved diagonally across the surface of the liquid in a trough.
    Fig. 3 (on fol. 129) shows a comb used to comb the surface from one end of the trough to the other.
    A paper is then carefully placed on the surface of this liquor to absorb the pattern, which should then be lifted up and dried.

    This paper was read at the meeting of the Royal Society on 8 January 1662. Two weeks later, Evelyn's method was actually tried and it 'succeeded'.

    This is a copy of RBO/1/139. There is another copy of these images at RBC/1/143.

    This volume is another copy of entries of the first two volumes of the Register Book. It was given to Sir Joseph Banks by G. S. Heales Esquire of Doctor's Common on 31 May 1814.
    Transcription
    When all the severall colours are thus floating on the liquor, to give them that agreable Chembletting you must with a pointed stick expressed in Fig 1 and a suddaine address, stir the Liquor and fluctuating Colours, by drawing it from one side of the Trough to the other; as the numbers show in Iconisme II which gives the Trough the Trough and liquor with the Colour &c.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    8 January 1662, ‘Mr. Evelyn read an Account of the making of marbled paper; which was ordered to be registered’ (Birch 1:69).

    22 January 1662, ‘The experiment of making marbled paper was made by a man introduced by the amanuensis; which succeeded, according to Mr. Evelyn’s description of that method’ (Birch 1:70).
    Related fellows
    John Evelyn (1620 - 1706, British) , Diarist
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
    Powered by CollectionsIndex+/CollectionsOnline