Bridget & Brian with some of their fabrics and designs.

While in Sydney in 1985, I found myself painting in an Oxford Street studio's roof, and working part time in a bottle shop. I began to talk to one of the bottle shop's patrons, who said he had some notes on the ancient process of marbling. He didn't understand the chemistry and asked me to join forces with him to help solve the problems.

Later that night over a few ales, I realised that paper in the sixteenth century was made of cotton, colour was made of vegetable resin and various colourants such as crushed insects and soil. My assumption was that in the twentieth century it had to be possible to print durable fabric using this marbling process. A type of colour residue was available and we had to make modifications so that we could use the paint in our process, but most of the hard work had already been done. Five weeks later we had solved the new names for the old chemicals and had also discovered a book, which was one of only 8 copies in the world published by a passionate marbling enthusiast in 1887, who had travelled the world looking for different book binderies. We had found a solution and that night, printed a shirt. We thought we had completed the puzzle!

I returned to Adelaide and joined forces with Bridget. We invested a whopping Aus$900.00 to start Rooftop Clothing. It was named after my rooftop creations in the Sydney studio. We purchased our special seaweed mix, a bath, fabric, simple chemicals and some wood and nails.

Nightime became the only time to do this work and we were using an old 4000 square metre disused motor garage on Norwood Parade (Adelaide-South Australia)called Gaby's Motors. As there was no power on this site, we invested the last of our finances to purchase a generator. It was here at this site that we discovered the importance that viscosity, temperature and dust had on our work. Sometimes we would print ten 3 metre lengths and find we had no results at all. We did not understand why!

We moved to the cool of Mount Barker in the Adelaide Hills and worked from home. The art studio was the back shed and it was a cramped and claustrophobic environment. It was here that we found that traces of oil were very bad for the process. In the past oil was used to print the papers, but it was not an option for us as it is not environmentally friendly and messy to work with. We changed our mixtures and each time we printed the quality improved, we learnt a little more and sales were increasing. We tried many experiments. We had fabric hanging in trees, on the verandah and eventually it started to take over the lounge room!

In February 1989 we were pushed to move our operations into larger premises by the possible large order from a Japanese firm. We moved, but the order did not come through. We were also encouraged by the ex-director of fashion from Altman's in New York, who wanted to represent our product in the USA. Exporting was starting to look like a possibility.

We built cool rooms to control temperature and viscosity of the bath. We had a new longer bath made, put in a plastic drying tunnel and started to achieve 30-40 good prints a day. We recorded everything we did as we became aware of the need to be accurate to the millimetre when mixing chemicals and paints. Even so, there were still problems with unreliable suppliers and fabric that did not meet our quality standards. We learnt to test quickly whenever a new batch of fabric was delivered.

Fabric is tested by dropping water onto the surface of the silk. If a nice large circle forms, then the material is perfect for our requirements. Small circles or square shapes formed by the water are not a good sign. We must have silk that has been made from the best quality silk worms that have been fed only on mulberry leaves. Our silk is imported from China, and each roll is numbered and recorded, as well as any fabric cut from that roll.

We started to attend trade fairs and retail craft fairs, and our product, Marblesque became available in 150 outlets in Australia. In 1990, we were asked to attend the Rosen Craft Wholesale Fair in Atlantic City, which enabled us to look into our first export opportunity. We wore our marbled clothing and were stopped on the street and photographed. During that week, we were able to set up a meeting with Macy's in New York. That resulted in Macy's placing an order with us. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), also asked for a complete outfit for their archives.

Our second introduction to the Japanese market came through a fourth generation kimono maker - Sahari Gem.We began to print Aus$700/metre fabric for kimonos and ties. Each finished kimono is worth Aus$25 000.

David Jones (a leading Australian department store) featured our ties in their Christams catalogue, and our tie business was getting stronger than ever. Contacts came from Hong Kong and our ties were available in SEIBU, Mitsikoshi, Lane Crawford, Rodan and Gallery Lafayette outlets. In Singapore, Marblesque ties are sold at Galleries Lafayette Singapore Pty Ltd, ISTAN Ltd, SOGO Pty Ltd, Robinsons Department Store and Tangs.

We started to look for a distributor in Europe. Everyone warned us of the dangers, and also of the doubts that Australia could provide the leaders of fashion with fabric, especially in Italy. We were worried that our designs may be copied, but investigated further. All companies we contacted were very polite, having never seen an Australian supplier. All of them were amazed at the beauty of the prints, especially as they were on silk. They were expecting polyester!

In the Pucci Palace, the daughter of the famous sixties Italian designer spent an hour with us discussing good companies to work with. After twelve meetings, four major companies wanted our fabric. It was too difficult and too expensive to copy our designs using heat transfer or screen printing. After sixteen hours of negotiation, Carnaval De Venise of Milan became our distributor. We were exporting to Italy!

A new distributor in New York was found and our Marblesque products were available in Macy's, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrums, Nieman Marcus and Bullocks.

New product directions were sought and now two South Australian companies are producing frames for prescription eyewear with our fabric embedded in the laminate. The second new product is fabric inside wrist watches and jewellery. We now print three dimensional objects such as ceramics. Our next direction is Emu leather, which should prove to be rather interesting.

Bridget and I are now experts in factory maintenance, refrigeration design, gas heater trouble-shooting, five tonne chemical padders, evaporative air cooling, environmental control viscosities, supply, storage, reproduction of designs and colourways, extensive recording of techniques and generally solving any problem that comes our way!

We know that with a little ingenuity and a lot of hard work, success can be achieved.