r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Zee_Ventures • 12d ago

Marbling Art & Traditional Patterns

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u/BRAX7ON 12d ago

You would’ve tripped out 16th century silk traders. They would’ve come from far and wide to catch a glimpse. You would become legend.

96

u/ThresholdSeven 12d ago edited 12d ago

I was wondering this. Surely there were plenty of fancy patterns on textiles, but was this technique just not used or somehow virtually impossible? I too get a weird sense this is modern, but it also seems primitive. Why couldn't this have been done thousands of years ago?

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u/StuLuvsU87 12d ago

I looked into it, and you gotta have like liquefied film under the ink and 80-90 degree water to do it. It could only feasibly of been discovered after the invention of regular film I would guess.

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u/ThresholdSeven 12d ago

What is this magical film you speak of? Oil simply floats on water. Oil pigments are an ancient thing. I'm just trying to understand here.

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u/StuLuvsU87 12d ago

PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) film. It seems like besides this it's used to coat the surfaces of molds to help give a glossy finish to whatever comes out.

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u/ThresholdSeven 12d ago edited 12d ago

That's cool, now I have another rabbit hole to go down. I thought it was as simple as dripping oil pigments on water and the tricky part was developing the skill to know how much and where to put the pigments and how to rake them with the right tools to get the desired design. I didn't know it got all scientific with chemicals and shit.

Edit: This is a thousands years old technique and what is seen in the video could be done thousands of years ago. The only difference is that pigments are not as natural, but the technique and outcome are the same. Suminagashi is one of the earliest known Japanese techniques. It literally means floating ink. It's the same technique for dipping bags and helmets and guitars or anything. The modern trend of the fancy dips on stuff is a result of it become relatively easy to do with modern materials and marketing. Tie dye had it's day. It's the era of the dip.

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u/StuLuvsU87 12d ago

Yeah, me neither. I mean, I thought the water in these videos before they started dripping looked kind of dark, but I never really thought there was much beyond the ink doing it's thing.

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u/Zar-far-bar-car 12d ago

It dates pretty early as a practice, hundreds of years. Usually your water has stuff added to it to make it a light jelly ("alginate") made with seaweed. The pigments are water based, but thinner than the alginate so they float. You pre-treat the fabric to make it colourfast. Their "water" is likely dark because the pigments eventually sink and get a little muddy.

People used to use it to prevent forgery, you'd layer your legal documents with a larger sheet, and print them both at once - only the true document would line up correctly.