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Happy Abstract, William Blake
Full leather binding with laced-on boards. Bound in black goat with suminagashi marbling. Doublures in black goat and flyleaves in paper. All edges marbled. Silk endbands. Interior pages suminagashi marbled and embellished with gold leaf. Untitled. Bound in 2019.
I chose to marble the inside pages because marbling is what I know. I'm not an illustrator or painter but I knew I could add color, dimension, and visual interest to the pages with marbling. It took some experimenting but I was able to come up with a method to create the thin flowing lines I desired. I used a thin size of carrageenan along with ink and soap in water as a dispersant. As I worked, trying one thing and another, I thought of William Blake and his letter...how he'd been so absorbed in his work. My marbling of the pages was an evolution of the style I desired which, in the end, did get to the place I'd been striving for.
Private Collection - Boston Athenaeum