Spot the Frippet: oleograph.

There are two kinds of oleograph.

One is a picture printed in oil paint to give the impression of an oil painting:

Love or Duty by Gabriele Castagnola 1873. Hideous, isn't it.

Each colour has to be printed separately, and the shading done by stippling, and this means the whole process both expensive and slow. 

These pictures are also sometimes called chromolithographs, and I admit you aren't very likely to come across one, but luckily the other sort of oleograph is both very beautiful and can be found all over the place, because it's the pattern made when a drop of oil is seen floating on water.

It's most usually petrol:


oil on the River Deule, France. Photo by Lamiot



photo by Creativity103 

It's always beautiful, though admittedly nearly always a disaster.

A drop of oil in a bowl of water will give you a DIY version, or the marbled endpapers of books work on the same principle.



Spot the Frippet: an oleograph. The Latin word oleum means oil, and the Greek word graphein is to do with writing.