ARTISAN CRAFT
Master gilder and paint-effects professional Roger Newton and his daughter K ate are a dream team, passing on decorative skills to a new generation
Roger Newton is holding a paintbrush loosely at the end, turning and pulling it gently across a piece of mottled yellow board to form a diagonal trail. He’s demonstrating the ancient art of marbleising – creating a veined, faintly freckled finish with oil paint imitating real stone. A second and third line follow, flowing randomly across the space. “I’m not trying to be a painter,” he says, tapping his brush to send spatters of paint onto the surface. “I want it to look natural, imperfect. You have to allow the paintbrush to be a little out of control.”
There are a few marbleising rules: use no more than three colours and, unless changing paint, don’t cross the lines – these are illusions of the faults in natural stone, which usually travel in the same direction. This is a traditional craft, rooted in classical times (there are examples in Pompeii) and revived across Europe ever since. The Victorians decorated whole staircases with it – there’s one at the V&A museum in London – as well as fireplaces in their terraced houses.
Today, we are in the studios of Master The Art: School of Decorative Finishes that Roger runs with his daughter Kate Elwell, from her home in L eighton, Shropshire. It’s my first morning on the father-daughter duo’s three-day paint-finishes course – learning the art of using oil paints to create faux marble as well as malachite, tor toiseshell, woodgrain and lapis lazuli.
In the airy plaster-pink studio, panels on the walls showcase different techniques, varnishing finishes and gilding possibilities. A display of wastepaper baskets and lamp bases decorated by Kate show me what I might, one day, achieve. Muddy the Patterdale terrier snoozes by the fireside. The table is laid for eight students – with paints, brushes and gleaming white practice boards. I have a History of Art degree, but the last time I wielded an actual paintbrush was to swish some emulsion around the kitchen. I’m daunted by the blankness before me. “You learn not to be frightened,” Roger says reassuringly, as I follow his lead, sweeping a rag dipped in linseed oil across my panel before daubing it with medium (a white spirit, oil and paint dryer mix), coloured with French
Ultramarine, my chosen shade. This watery background base will allow darker lampblack marbling lines to move, soften and flow.
