Why is my print mirrored?

The paper is laid face down on the floating ink, so when you peel it off and turn it over you see the pattern from the other side. Every real marbled print is a mirror image of the tray.

What is “clear water” for?

In suminagashi, drops of plain water with a surfactant are dropped between drops of ink. They push the ink into rings and show up as pale bands.

What is the difference between ebru and suminagashi?

Suminagashi from Japan uses very few colours, usually sumi ink and clear water, and lets the rings drift with a breath or a fan. Turkish ebru uses thick size and many pigments, and shapes them with styluses, combs and brushes into stones, combed patterns and flowers.

Yes, on this device. Up to 14 prints hang on the drying line. Open it to save any print as a PNG image or share it.

Marble Paper

Float ink on water, comb it into patterns, pull a print. Back to the game

How to play

Pick an ink pot and tap the water to drop ink; hold to grow a bigger drop. Each new drop pushes every older drop outward, so the first colours get squeezed into thin veins. The brush flicks a spray of tiny drops. Drag the stylus to rake the ink, drag the comb to pull many parallel lines at once (tap it again to switch between wide, medium and fine teeth), and use the swirl to stir. When you like what you see, press Print: a sheet of paper is laid on the water and peeled off with the pattern, mirrored, and hung on the drying line. From there you can save each print as a PNG or share it. Recipes walk you through classic patterns step by step: stone, nonpareil, chevron, bouquet, a Turkish tulip and Japanese suminagashi.

Keyboard: 1 to 7 pick an ink; D, B, S, C and W pick drop, brush, stylus, comb and swirl; arrow keys move a cursor and Space puts the tool down (hold it and use the arrows to rake); P prints, Z undoes and X skims the tray clean.

Ebru and suminagashi

Paper marbling is one of the oldest ways to decorate paper. In Japan, suminagashi (“floating ink”) made soft rings of black ink and clear water; the oldest surviving examples are in a 12th-century anthology of poems kept at Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto. In the Ottoman world, ebru flourished from the 16th century. Marbled sheets framed calligraphy and covered books. In the early 20th century Necmeddin Okyay is credited with inventing flower ebru, such as the tulip. UNESCO added Turkish ebru to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2014.

Marbled paper reached Europe in the 1600s, and for about three centuries bookbinders lined books with marbled endpapers. Patterns such as nonpareil, chevron and bouquet got their names in European workshops, where recipes were closely guarded trade secrets.

Why the ink floats

Marblers thicken the water with a size: gum tragacanth in traditional ebru, carrageenan (a seaweed extract) in much of the West. The thick size slows the colours down and helps keep them on the surface. Each paint is mixed with a little ox gall, a natural surfactant that lowers its surface tension, so a drop spreads out across the size instead of sinking. Each new drop needs a bit more ox gall than the last, so it can push the earlier colours aside. A sheet of paper, often treated with alum, then picks up the whole floating layer in one go. That’s why every print is unique.

The maths of marbling

This toy uses the model from Shufang Lu, Aubrey Jaffer and colleagues in “Mathematical Marbling” (2012). A drop of radius r landing at point c moves every point p of ink to c + (p − c)·√(1 + r²/|p − c|²): a point at distance d ends up at distance √(d² + r²). The ring between the old and new positions has exactly the area of the drop, so ink is stretched but never gains or loses area.

A tine line (the stylus, or each tooth of a comb) slides ink parallel to itself by αλ/(d + λ), where d is the distance from the tine, α is how far it moved and λ sets how sharp the pull is. That is a shear, which also preserves area; here it also fades out with distance, as in a shallow tray. Every patch of ink is a polygon whose edges are subdivided wherever the maths stretches them, so the shapes stay smooth however much you comb.

Questions people ask

Why is my print mirrored?: The paper is laid face down on the floating ink, so when you peel it off and turn it over you see the pattern from the other side. Every real marbled print is a mirror image of the tray.
What is “clear water” for?: In suminagashi, drops of plain water with a surfactant are dropped between drops of ink. They push the ink into rings and show up as pale bands.
What is the difference between ebru and suminagashi?: Suminagashi from Japan uses very few colours, usually sumi ink and clear water, and lets the rings drift with a breath or a fan. Turkish ebru uses thick size and many pigments, and shapes them with styluses, combs and brushes into stones, combed patterns and flowers.
Are my prints saved?: Yes, on this device. Up to 14 prints hang on the drying line. Open it to save any print as a PNG image or share it.