1 OF 3

The Art of Marbling

It is not possible to tell exactly when people started painting papers using the techniques of ebru which is one of the most important of paper decorating arts. Although it is possible to find ebru papers in the bindings of centuries old books, these cannot be used to date ebru papers as these books may be restored years after they have been written and ebru papers on their bindings may have been used during a later repair. Only ebru papers with a written date on them can be used as evidence for the age of that ebru paper. Besides the oldest ebru papers dated in this manner are the papers used in Arifi's "Guy-i Cevgan" in the Museum of Topkapi Palace collection which is dated to 1539, two papers in the Library of Istanbul University which were used for two calligraphies of Mir Ali of Herat which are dated to 1539, a paper used for Maliki Deylemi's calligraphies from Ugur Derman's Collection which is dated to 1554 and three papers used in one of the copies of Fuzuli's book, "Hadikat-us sueda" (Garden of Happiness) which are dated to 1595 can be used as evidence for the history of Turkish ebru. The artists who made the first three ebrus are unknown whereas in the opening page of Fuzuli's book, after the name of the book, "Hadikat-us sueda" in red ink, "Ma Sebek Mehmet Ebrisi" (with ebru of Sebek Mehmet) is written.Three ebru papers with pale colours are used inside the book and on the last page the date is given as "1004" (1595 ).From the sentence on the first page, we learn that the name of the marbler who has been mentioned as "Sebek" in the booklet "Tertib-i Risale-i Ebri" is Mehmet and the papers used in this book are made by this marbler. The last page indicates the date that the book has been written.

We don't have the chance of identifying all of our marblers by name since ebru papers haven't been signed during our history of ebru. The following are the marblers who made important contribution to our ebru tradition as mentioned previously.

1 OF 3