Marbled Paper

This is the second edition, with corrections, from the original edition published in 1990 by the University of Pennsylvania Press (a publication of the A.S.W. Rosenbach Fellowship in Bibliography). With over 350 colour and 80 black-and-white illustrations, and a new Foreword by Sidney Berger.

Richard J. Wolfe (1928-2017) was a rare book librarian, practicing marbler, and collector of marbled papers and books about marbling. This book is the result of more than twenty-five years of research and practical experience. Wolfe personally tracked down and sorted out historical records of marbling from their original sources, and he drew on his own extensive experience as a practitioner to write eloquently on technical and stylistic questions. The resulting study meticulously reconstructs the rise and fall of the craft and recounts its history, techniques, and patterns in such a way as to put all aspects of this fascinating craft in proper perspective.

When first published, Marbled Paper was immediately recognized as the most comprehensive study of marbling to that point, and its status as the standard history of the subject has not been diminished by more recent works. For that reason, and with the goal of making it available again to scholars, students, and practitioners of marbling, Oak Knoll Press is pleased to be able to present this second edition in cooperation with the Wolfe family, completed with minor corrections left by the author.