No. 012 by Mahir Yavuz. Ebru is paper marbling as it is done in Turkey. The page shows a marbler’s zinc tray from above, filled with thickened water. Pigments float on it: indigo, turquoise, green, yellow ochre, red ochre, tobacco, lamp black and white.
The visitor works in the marbler’s order. First the colours are dropped on the water, where each drop opens into a disc and pushes the others aside. Then an awl is drawn through them in parallel lines, each the other way from the last, which is called gel-git, come and go. Then a comb is pulled once across those lines, and the colours fall into feathered rows. Last, a sheet of paper is laid on the water from one side, left a moment, lifted and turned over. The paper takes the paint and the water is left clear for the next sheet.
For a visitor who has never marbled, one button makes a classic pattern from clean water, step by step, and names each step. It goes through five in turn. Taraklı is the combed pattern. Bülbül yuvası, the nightingale’s nest, is rows of spirals. Şal, the shawl, is slow waves drawn across a gel-git. Hatip is rings of colour pulled into hearts on a pale ground. Battal, the oldest, is colour alone, with no awl and no comb.
Each sheet is a mirror image of the tray. The sheets are kept beside the tray, and each can be opened and saved as a picture. Nothing is uploaded.