The marbling of book edges and the making of marbled papers is, as may be judged from the finished results, a difficult art. Some bookbinders are able to do their own marbling, but, as a rule, except, perhaps, in country places, marbling is generally entrusted to professional marblers, who do the work very cheaply and expeditiously. Amateurs will do well if they also employ the professional marbler, for though the work is not beyond the capacity of a painstaking and artistic amateur, it will for the majority be found tedious, messy, and probably unsatisfactory. But though marbling requires some skill, yet it is at the same time a simple process, and the apparatus and materials may be described in a few words, all that is necessary being a shallow wooden water tight trough, a fiat piece of wood, equal in length to the breadth of the trough and about 3 in. broad, a number of combs (Figs. 49 to 51)

the teeth of which are of different widths, wooden rakes, cups, jugs, bottles, brushes for the colors, a large earthenware bucket or pan, a bunch of birch rods, and a marble slab and muller for grinding the colors. Thus it is quite an easy matter for the marbler to construct his own apparatus.

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