Excactly who discovered the trick of marbling paper, and how, is a mystery. But it is likely that the art of ebru, as it is known, began among the Turks of Central Asia. Perhaps the very first marbling artist was warming himself with a hot salep, one cold evening when the idea occurred to him. Having sprinkled some delicious cumin on his drink, he might have arranged it to make an attractive pattern on the surface. He might even have taken a small piece of paper and imprinted the pattern onto it. If he did, he would have been using the same basic process that ebru artists still use today to make their enchanting decorative paper.

Francis Bacon was sufficiently taken with Turkish ebru to make a note of it. In 1627 he recored that ‘the Turks hhave a pretty art of chamoletting of paper which is not us us in use. They take diverse oyled colours and put them severally in drops upon the water, and stir the water lightly, and then wet their paper (being of some thickness) with it and the paper will be waxed and veined like chamolet or marble.’…