R U C K E R S P A P E R S
Designs made from wood blocks
hand cut by Grant O’Brien
Larger view of O'Brien Type 1
The colour of the papers provided may vary slightly from that shown here (the exact colour reproduced here depends on the video screen you are using to view this site). However the printed colour has been carefully matched to the cleaned and restored lid papers on the 1651a AR harpsichord in Traquair House, Innerleithen, near Edinburgh. Exactly the same pattern but with a mirror reversal also occurs in a brown ochre colour on some early Ruckers instruments. This pattern seems to imitate the wood-grain effect produced by plank-sawn ash - the so-called 'Hungarian ash'. Because I have not been able to do a comparative colour match to this paper I have not been able to produce and sell this version of this pattern.
This pattern is often decorated with Latin mottoes, red arabesques in the same style as the blue arabesques used on the soundboard, and a thin red-striped border. I suggest that you do careful tests with the ink or paint that you use to make sure that the ink does not 'bleed' along the fibres of the paper and blur the edges of the lettering, arabesques or edge borders. Generally you should be safe using good-quality tempera- or acrylic-based pigments.
Click on the following links for more details:
Return to the main catalogue of Ruckers papers
Prices of machine-printed Ruckers papers.
How to pay for the Ruckers papers you have ordered
Hints on laying the Ruckers 'silk' paper
Hints on decorating the papers after they are laid.
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