Gilding with Peter Thornton
Gilding is another one of those things that I knew nothing about. It's one thing to admire someone else's beautiful work, and another to have a deep understanding of the techniques they used to create the piece.
I will have to say right away that gilding is an extremely expensive hobby. In fact, I hope to make it part of my process, and become proficient enough at it so I would not longer have to use the somewhat shameful word hobby for it. I tend either to do my best (or reasonably well) at things, or not do them at all, and thus very few things would fall under the "hobby" category. Maybe I could say my hobby is to collect mugs with cats on them — I do a pretty half-hearted effort, and have maybe a total of 6 mugs I've accumulated over twice as many years. Anyway, I digress.
Class
One of the most expensive items (except for gold leaf itself) is a good burnisher. Peter said that old hematite ones were great, but the newer ones are s0-so. I ended up buying an agate one later. For the workshop, Peter kindly let us use his tools.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20181025_163334.jpg)
The first task was to guild a square. It is surprisingly a lot of work, since you have to apply a lot of pressure to burnish the gesso.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20181025_163350.jpg)
I got 9.5/10 for mine :)
Peter shared his gesso recipe with the class, and we got a chance to make some as well. However, we were using the gesso that the previous group had made the day before, since it needed to first dry out overnight. I am not actually sure why, since it is supposed to reconstitute with water, so in theory it could be used fresh.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20181025_163436.jpg)
After doing some squares, we went onto simple letters. One of the issues I ran into a lot was burnishing the paper around the letter too much. I think you just need to be careful and not apply pressure outside of the gesso area, and that is pretty much all there is to it.
Peter also showed us a technique where only some of the surface of the paper is covered with gesso, and then gold is applied in a square, so you have both glossy and matte parts.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20181025_163344.jpg)
The challenge with this technique is that the gold will simply detach and fly away if not fixed. He suggested to apply a light wash of PVA glue over it, but that did make the gold a tiny bit less shiny. Although the way I have it in the pictures, you can't even tell. I applied the PVA glue before pasting the sheet into my notes.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190911_162831.jpg)
Trying it at home
Once I got all of my tools and ingredients in the mail (it took a while, especially since the glass muller for crushing the gesso ingredients came all the way from Europe), I decided to try to replicate my class experience.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190303_165328.jpg)
I carefully measured the right amounts of all the crazy powders:
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190303_170251.jpg)
... and then ground them up like crazy. Or at least that is what I thought.
In reality, my first batch of gesso came out way too grainy. It was completely unusable.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190307_200832-1.jpg)
I decided to put it through another round of grinding.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190307_210026.jpg)
As you can see in the picture below, that definitely helped with the particle size:
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190309_143722.jpg)
Unfortunately, when I tried to apply gold leaf, it simply didn't stick. I was so disappointed I even ordered some of the "pink stuff" to try it as well (I was not a fan, but maybe I was using it wrong or something). Then I tried adding more glue to my gesso, since that seemed like the right approach to solving the "won't stick" problem.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190310_135357.jpg)
It definitely worked better with the glue, but I overdid the burnishing part on the paper, so it lost all of its texture.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190310_140856.jpg)
In the workshop, we had used loose-leaf gold, but I accidentally got patent gold. I might have been imagining things, but it just didn't seem to stick as well, so I decided to test that theory, and got some loose-leaf as well.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190911_163835.jpg)
It seemed to work better for me, but I really don't have a scientific explanation.
Finally, I decided to try some Instacoll as well, to have a complete overview of the options. It worked quite well, but the surface looks bumpy. A friend of mine said that it can be pre-burnished through thin non-stick paper before applying the gold leaf, but I have not tried that yet.
![](https://www.inkmeblue.com/content/images/2019/09/IMG_20190911_163859.jpg)
I am hoping to use gilding in one of my upcoming projects, so I will definitely need to practice more before I do that.
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