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Decorating Defects - their cause and cure

Imitating Rouge Royal Marble

The ground of this marble is mixed with Indian red, Venetian red, and oil black, with a little white lead added, mixed together with equal parts of oil and turpentine and a little patent driers. It will be necessary to give the work two or three coats of ground colour, which must be made to dry hard, taking care to rub it smooth with fine glasspaper after each coat, and not to rub the colour off the sharp edges of the work. It must now remain till quite hard.
Process of Working.-For marbling, take some of the ground colour with a little more white lead added to it, made quite thin with turps and oil, and with some extra driers in to give it a drying quality.
Rub a thin glaze of this colour over a small part of the work. Next take a piece of coarse paper and roll it up in your hand to the shape of a ball to form a dabber, and have ready on a palette board some of the ground colour with a little oil black mixed together stiff, with driers; also, in a clean paint can or pot, half a pint of turps with one-third of japanners' gold size mixed together.
First dip the coarse paper dabber into the turps, then into the dark colour on the palette board; turn the dabber round and round until the colour is even in the paper, and then dab on the panel with a light touch. Soften thoroughly with the badger-hair softening brush.
With the same colour and with a sable or Siberian ox-hair pencil put in a few fine dark veins. While the work is wet or set get another piece of paper and roll it up as before to form a dabber. Have ready some grey paint in a paint can or pot, dip the dabber in the turps as before and then into the grey, and dab or rub it on the palette to make it even as before. Now go over the whole of the work with the grey in the same manner as if you were graniting.
This spotting should not be done too thinly, but so that it gets a soft appearance; when finished, soften carefully with the badger softening brush. If not sufficiently grey, go over again with the same colour.
When the panel or slab is dry go over the work with a rag dipped in the turps and gold size (or a sash-tool will do). When this is done take a Siberian ox-hair pencil and, with some white a little stiffer, put on the white veins and soften with the badger; the different veins are easily connected and this may be done by simply turning or twisting the pencil.
These principal veins render the work most effective, and therefore ought to be pencilled out boldly and according to the character of the marble, and gently softened.
When the white is set, go over it again on some parts to make it appear variegated. Let the work be perfectly dry, and, in order to give it the proper shade, have ready a little chrome yellow and Prussian blue finely ground; with these colours used very thin and separately, put a thin glaze on various parts of the white veins and the ground. Now take a fitch and dip it into the ground colour made very thin; put in spots of various sizes and shapes in different parts of the work.
This marble may be worked out smaller than or even six times the size of the plate with similar markings.