Cosette Russell

Artist's Statement
Cosette has been marbling silk, cotton, leather, vinyl and wood products for 11 years. Previously she worked exclusively in the batik medium for 14 years. Her love of color and the flow of colors on fabric has been a continuous and exciting art form. Her marbling technique has been compared to the finest Italian hand-marbled papers, arrived at only after months of research and experimentation, and years of daily practice.

Her work has been featured in museum catalogs such as the Smithsonian, and the Museum of Fine Art, Boston. Her products have been sold in the Pierpont Morgan Library and in gift shops of many fine art museums and galleries around the country.

The fabric is dyed by hand for a background color (all the scarves are white when they are first purchased). Also, I dye some custom colors in the larger sheets of silk before marbling. Once the fabric is dyed it must be completely machine washed to remove all excess dye. Then the marbling can begin.

The washed material is soaked in a mordant (French, meaning "to bite") which causes the marbling color to adhere to it. The mordanted material must be hung to dry. Meanwhile, liquid hand mixed non-toxic colors are dropped gently into a large shallow tray containing about 2 - 3 inches of a viscous liquid made with water and carrageenan (refined seaweed powder). The colors float on top of this liquid. When all the colors are sprinkled on, then the mixture is raked back and forth with different "combs" made of rows of pins attached to a board, spaced at differing intervals for making the patterns. Once the patterns are achieved and can be seen floating, the material is carefully laid on top of this design. The material immediately absorbs the color and is lifted off, taking all the floating color with it, then rinsed and hung to dry. When the marbled material is dry, it is again washed in the machine to remove all excess mordant, and then dried in the dryer. The material is ready to be made into unique one of a kind items.

Marbling is quite a fascinating and demanding process (once one expects certain results). Otherwise if it is done for fun, the results can be surprising and wonderful, even for beginners. That's what makes all the preparatory work worthwhile!