About Session

Discover Ebru art, a 15th-century Islamic art form recognized by UNESCO as world common heritage and classified in the UK as an endangered heritage art. This engaging 60-minute live demonstration introduces audiences to the beauty, history, and technique of Turkish water marbling, including the traditional finishing process of polishing with agate and beeswax.

The presentation features three integrated components:
1. Historical Overview: Learn how paint floated on water has been transformed into art for over 500 years, virtually unchanged from its original practice. Understand Ebru’s cultural significance, its UNESCO recognition (November 2014, Paris), and its current status as a practice maintained by only approximately 3,500 professional marblers globally.
2. Process & Tools Explanation: Discover the specialized tools and techniques that make this art form unique—how marbling tools shape liquid into intentional patterns, how the transfer process captures the ephemeral water design onto paper permanently, and how traditional finishing with agate stone and beeswax creates a luminous, protective surface that enhances the marbled design.

3. Live Demonstration: Watch in real time as five historically rooted patterns are created on water, transferred to paper, and finished with the traditional agate and beeswax polishing technique:

Battal (15th century)
Gel Git (15th century)
Non Parallel (16th century)
Nightingale Nest (16th century)
Bouquet (16th century)

For encaustic artists, this presentation offers unexpected connections to material practice through the traditional beeswax finishing process that brings out the luminosity of marbled designs. Like encaustic work, Ebru marbling celebrates the transformative properties of material, in this case, how beeswax reveals depth, color, and permanence in water-based imagery.

This presentation celebrates the philosophy of “Water in Motion, Liquid Poetry”, inviting audiences to experience the meditative beauty, cultural heritage, and time-honored finishing techniques of this globally endangered art form.