Ever since I started bookbinding, I wanted to know how that beautiful paper (that was always in old books) was made. I searched and searched on the internet and in books for ways to do it without much success.
When I gave it a go by myself, it didn't work. I never exactly knew what was I doing right, or wrong, I just knew that my results were not consistent and that frustrated me a lot. After asking among members of the IAPMA (You can read about them here) I got the name of Regina and Don St John and their studio: Chena River Marblers.
When I entered their website, the first thing I saw was a powerful message “Marbling since 1987”. When I found out that they had been marbling since before I was born… I said to myself “I need to learn from them!”.
I was able to coordinate a 3-day workshop within a trip I had scheduled to the US that year, back in 2013. It would be a combination of PBI (Paper and Book Intensive), the American Academy of Bookbinding and Chena River Marblers.
When the day to meet them arrived, I couldn't believe it, their house was full of colors, papers, fabrics and all kinds of objects that could have been intervened by marbling.
Don had been a high school physics teacher, so his explanations were quite precise and scientific. With him I learned about classic marbling, where we start from pigments, make our own paint and replicate patterns from previous centuries.
With Regina on the other hand, I learned to play with colors in marbling with acrylics. I experimented more on the use of different types of combs to create patterns.
They were long days full of paint. The best of all, I was able to understand what I was doing right and where I was going wrong when it came to marbling at home. And, upon my return to Peru I was able to give workshops where the results were finally consistent.
That's why I was super happy to share my knowledge last December in mi visit to Perú.
Quedan pocos lugares, separa el tuyo aquí.
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