Home >>Professional Decorating>>Decorating Museum>>Egyptian Green or Vert de Mer Marble

Decorating Defects - their cause and cure

Imitating Egyptian Green or Vert de Mer Marble

The ground is black, in oil paint, with a little varnish in it, and must be well prepared and laid perfectly smooth on the surface of the wood or slab to be marbled. It is necessary to give the work two thin coats, especially on mantelpieces, fluted columns, pilasters, etc., in order that the sharp edges of the wood or slab may be completely covered.
Egyptian green or Vert de Mer marble in colour and working nearly resembles the Genoa marble, Vert Antique, etc. (It is a superior Serpentine.)
There are several other similar varieties, called by different names, but they need not be described since they are, for all practical purposes included under the above titles.
Process of Working.-Mix the colours rather thick for marbling-middle Brunswick green, with the best boiled pale linseed oil and a little turps with driers added.
Also mix some of the same colour with white lead, about half and half. Keep the two colours separate on the palette board. Next mix a little white lead with the driers and keep it separate also on the palette. Have ready, in a clean paint can or pot, half a pint of turps, with one-third of japanners' gold size mixed together.
Take a strong goose feather, cut away part of it at unequal distances; dip the feather into the turps and gold size, and then into the dark colours, dab on or scumble on the panel or slab with the feather moderately full of the dark colour, work it on freely and carefully in different patches, some of them larger than others, varying them as much as possible, and soften carefully with the badger.
When these are laid on and dry, take another feather and cut parts away as before; dip it into the turps and gold size, then in the light green colour, and fill the feather rather full of the colour. Put on veins of various sizes, distributing them with taste, and interspersing them with very fine veins with the same feather. The broader veins are also put in, in this manner, which must be repeated until the whole of the veins are sufficiently varied, and the small threads may be drawn from the wet masses of the light green colour over the dark parts with the feather. Next with thin white, with a sable or ox-hair pencil, pass partly over the large green veins with short thick touches, which may be continued in the narrower parts with a finer pencil.
Glazing.- When the work is dry, in order to give it the proper shade, have ready some Oxford ochre, or Venetian red and Prussian blue, which has been finely ground, and with these colours very thin and used separately, put a thin glaze of each on various parts of the work, and also a thin glaze of the dark green and raw sienna mixed together. Now take a fitch and dip it into the black and put in spots of various sizes and forms in the lightest parts of the work.
This marble may be worked out smaller than or even up to six times the size of the plates with similar markings.