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How a sculptor revived the art of marbling

The art of marbling

GRACE ERSKINE IS SITTING at her desk with a row of vibrant patterned papers hanging on a washing line above her head. She has decorated each with brightly coloured ink using a technique called marbling, and once dry she uses the papers as covers for notebooks that she sells in her online stationery shop.

Erskine, 28, began marbling in 2016, after studying fine art at the University of Leeds and working as a sculptor. ‘I had a bit of a rethink. I knew I wanted to create affordable art, and working with colour was really important because the sculp- ture work I’d done before wasn’t colourful and didn’t reflect my personality.’

She began experimenting with ink and paint, and watched Youtube tutorials on binding before making her first notebooks. ‘I am an avid list writer and probably have about six or seven notebooks on the go at one time,’ says Erskine. ‘I realised I didn’t like the boring pads – I wanted jazzy ones.’

In December 2016, she launched an online shop, Erskine Rose, selling both notebooks and candles, which she had started making two years earlier.

The marbling is the quickest part of making the notebooks, Erskine explains. She begins with a tray of water and several bottles of colourful oilbased marbling ink. ‘You put five droplets of each coloured ink into the water,’ she says. Next she stirs the ink with a metal prong to create the marbling effect – she uses various colour combinations, though her favourite is neonpink and orange.

Erskine then places a sheet of stickyback paper into the water, leaves it there for five seconds to absorb the colour, and hangs it up to dry. ‘This can take a long time, the neon ones can take up to two weeks to dry,’ she says.

Once the marbled paper is completely dry, Erskine peels off the sticky back and applies it to a sheet of plain card. To remove air bubbles, she rubs over it with a plastic tool that looks like a credit card.

Finally, she places 15 sheets of ivory paper inside to form the pages of the book, then holds them in place temporarily using pegs while she stabs holes in the spine, and sews it all together using a needle and embroidery thread.

Last year, Erskine made roughly 600 notebooks (from £7) and has now started monogramming initials on the covers. She also slips a handwritten thank-you note into each one – and she means it. ‘I absolutely love doing it,’ she says. ‘I could make them all day, every day.’ erskinerose.com

From right Artist Grace Erskine at work in her London studio; the finished notebooks. Interview by Jessica Carpani. Photographs by Anthony Prothero