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| Samuel W. Webb marbling from: https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18718467/ |
Samuel W. Webb was a little known American marbler who practiced oil based marbling in the early 60's. He marbled on a size of gum tragacanth with lithographic ink thinned with rectified turpentine. He is mentioned in an early 1963 edition (Vol. I no. 2) of The
Guild of Book Workers Journal and was featured in the February 1962 American Artist magazine (below).
In the 1960's there was a renaissance of many things in the U.S. including marbling. I think I started to marble quite by accident some time around '64 or '65 in Provincetown, Cape Cod. We hippies were living in a very small duplex on Commercial Street in front of
Yeffe Kimbal's studio cottage. She was making large thick polymer paintings from plastics that her husband had helped develop.
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| Yeffe Kimbal, American Indian Woman Artist, A painting from her "space period". |
In our tiny backyard were a couple barrels of solvents Yeffe used in her work. I would 'appropriate' a little and mix them with waste paint from my family's little paint store (
The Color Bar, Milford, CT) and pour them on any discarded cardboard I could find. I was like a mad crazed scientist/artist high on the fumes from the solvents that I had liberated. One day it rained and I had to pour off the excess water from my half-dried makeshift canvasses. The oily film on the pooled rainwater, when poured off that film printed a simple marbled pattern onto the receiving piece of cardboard ... a light went on in my toasted brain.
From 'American Artist' February 1962.
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