Feathered Blue Marbled Moon Print
Once in a Blue Moon
Feathering is a specific move in the marbler's vocabulary: after colour has been dropped and combed into a field of rings or waves, a fine stylus or rake is drawn back and forth across the surface in a light zigzag, pulling each ring out into a fine, tapering point, the way a comb dragged through wet hair leaves a feathered edge rather than a blunt one. It is usually the last thing done to a bath before the paper goes down, since the feathering is delicate and easily disturbed, and it turns a field of separate circles into something closer to a single, continuous, plumed texture, which is exactly the effect running through this piece's blue ground.
The phrase "once in a blue moon" is old enough that most people who use it have never wondered what it actually refers to. In modern usage it names the second full moon to fall within a single calendar month, an event that happens roughly once every two to three years simply because the lunar cycle, at about twenty-nine and a half days, is slightly shorter than most calendar months, so two full moons occasionally fit inside one. It has nothing to do with colour. Genuine blue-coloured moons are a real but much rarer phenomenon, and an entirely different mechanism: they need large quantities of dust or smoke particles of a very particular size, wider than the wavelength of red light but narrow enough to scatter it, suspended high in the atmosphere. Major volcanic eruptions have produced them; the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa is the most frequently cited example, reportedly turning the moon visibly blue or even green for people around the world for months afterward, as ash of just the right particle size scattered red wavelengths of moonlight out of the sky while letting blue pass through largely undisturbed, the reverse of the process that reddens an eclipsed moon.
Printed on 100% cotton rag paper, this piece is one of a limited edition of ten, each pulled from an individually floated and feathered bath, which means the exact texture of the feathering is unrepeatable from print to print. It is mounted on a high quality round window-cut mount board, available with a choice of mount colours, and backed with an acid-free card board to protect the sheet long term. No frame is supplied, which suits a feathered, textural pattern like this one well, since a plain, narrow frame moulding tends to let the print's own fine detail carry the piece rather than competing with it.
Feathered pattern holds up particularly well at a slight distance, where the individual points blur into a continuous, plumed texture rather than reading as separate marks, so it suits a wall seen from across a room as much as one seen close up. As with the rest of the series, keep it away from strong, direct sun and glaze with UV-filtering glass to slow the fading that any printed ink will eventually show.
This is a limited edition of ten, made in a single size of 40cm x 40cm (400mm x 400mm), priced at £60, mounted on round window-cut board.
Feathered Blue Marbled Moon Print — 40cm x 40cm, marbled print on cotton rag paper, mounted on round window-cut board. View the piece