Queerious Labs, an experimental art and technology creative space and community workshop located in San Francisco’s SoMa district, is offering an evening workshop on the arts of ebru, Turkish water marbling, led by Katherine Ward.
You learn how to create ebru designs and have the chance to make your pieces. The workshop will also cover the history and importance of ebru in Turkish culture, and well as specific patterns and terms.
“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.” - Turkish Culture Foundation
Issue 66, December 2023
Turkey’s Centenary Issue
