Islamic decorated papers

yes, let's really do a miniature painting conference!! sounds incredible 😍

So many wonderful things to look forward to! the thought of that cup of tea warms my heart on a very cold day! And the Conference and the marbling! When we are all so closed in the thoughts of all these delights are very good for the soul! Thank you Vaishali!

It would be lovely to welcome you back to Blightly Alison whenever you can, I'll make you a proper cup of tea ;-) and of course I will do that for anyone who comes to a studio class... whenever that's possible! I also want to organise a more formal annual Miniature Painting Conference in London when travel is possible. Knowing also that Zoom makes things available worldwide.

And, when live classes resume, I can also offer the Marbling (messy) class in my studio (better than messing up your laptops, hehe!)

In the meantime - I love to meet you here and also live via Zoom every month!

Thank you Vaishali and Cecilia for this conversation and for the information! I am inspired! I have still not done the gold sprinkling but Vaishali makes it look easy ;) but it is on my list. The Fire class is just wonderful! I cannot recommend it highly enough! Such amazing things to learn. Thank you both of you. And, oh, should that class be taught in London, I hope I shall be off school so I can come!!! I would be there in a heartbeat!!! Best wishes to you both, Alison

Thanks so much Vaishali! I definitely can keep busy with this, thank you!! 😉 There's a lot to experiment, it's so nice most things can be found in our kitchen too! I'd love to try gold sprinkling (I've been wishing to do your Fire class for a long time, I hope to joing this year 😃) but I've been too scared until now... I'll experiment dyeing first, marbling would be really nice too, maybe when things get better and we can travel again I'll come to London to see how you make it!! Thanks for sharing the resources too! 🌷

I immediately thought of marbling. There are a few books on this. I used to teach a course on marbling in the days when we could do live classes in the studio, as it's very messy! You could try it yourself at home. Marbling was a secret for years before it was 'discovered', and actually English marblers helped preserve marbling heritage.

Chambers, Anne. The Practical Guide to Marbling Papers. London: Thanes & Hudson, 1986

Chambers, Anne. The Principal Antique Patterns of Marbled Papers. Burford, Oxfordshire: The Cygnet Press, 1984

Doizy, Marie Ange and Ipert, Stephane. Papier Marbre: son Histoire et sa Fabrication. Editions Technorama, 1985 (since you read French!)

Easton, Phoebe Jane. Marbling: A History and a Bibliography. Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1983

Grunebaum, Gabriele. How to Marblize Paper. New York: Dover Publications, 1984

Those are European and American books, in Turkish it's called 'ebru'.

If you look at books on Islamic bookbinding, they may also have sections or chapters on paper that might be relevant.

Decorated papers otherwise - actually, I think of beautiful Japanese papers too.

Gold sprinkling (which you'll see decorating the edges of this website, from the Conference of the Birds image!) or zarafshan you can also do yourself at home with a metal sieve and gold leaf and gold size. I demonstrated this in our last Fire class, I think some people remember and you just need to be quite fast, but it's relatively straightforward I think. @Alison Guest

Also dip dyeing in trays... also - try onion skin and other paper dyes one day. Also - indigo!

Another really simple thing that has a different effect that you could do tomorrow - coffee staining instead of tea staining! Tea staining is really classic and I love it so much, so different kinds of tea too...

Finally, in terms of decoration and borders, I suppose illumination comes into that too... all kinds of borders and edges.

I would hazard a guess that there is more on these wide-ranging subjects than there is on miniature painting, actually! So you're lucky!