Gold Leaf Finish

A gold leaf gilded frame that is having any small breaks in the leaf patched, known as 'faulting'. It will then be distressed and finished.

Same Profile, Different Finish

This is the same obeche frame profile but with two different gilded finishes, one is 12ct white gold and the other is 23.5ct gold.

Gold on Black

Gold leaf on black bole, distressed, and with a grey colourwash.

Gilding the frame from the previous post...

Gold cove frame

A cove or scoop shaped frame that has been water gilded in 23.5ct gold leaf. The top photo is just after the frame has been water gilded. The second photo is after the gilding has been distressed. The last two photos show the finished frame after an off-white wash has been applied to the whole frame.

Same profile, different finishes

Wide gilded frames

Two gilded frames in various final stages of finishing.

Recent frames

Gilded frames with gesso ornament

Gilded frame

This is one of the finished frames that I was gilding yesterday. It is lightly distressed with rottenstone and was finished with a grey-white wash.

Gold Leaf

23.5ct Medium Deep Gold Leaf

22ct Moon Gold Leaf

18ct Lemon Gold Leaf

16ct Green Gold Leaf

12ct White Gold Leaf

These are some of the different types of gold leaf that are used in gilding picture frames. It is difficult to photograph the colours, but in reality they look quite different to each other. The gold leaves come in books of 25 sheets, each sheet is about 80mm x 80mm.

Starting the gilding...

 

                                      

Here we have a couple of frames gilded in 23.5ct gold leaf - one is burnished while the other (top) was left matt. The next frame is done in 18ct lemon gold, this frame later had the outer section burnished. The last frame is gilded with 22ct moon gold over various bole colours with burnished outer.

Olympics 2012

The Olympic games opens on July 27th, here is my little display to celebrate the games being in England this summer! The stock photo is one I used in an Olympic themed framing competition a few years ago, it has been temporarily put in this 18th Century frame, simply because it fitted. The photo was originally in the frame you can just see behind the easel which is gilded in gold, silver, and bronze. This frame is now used to hold a selection of newspaper cuttings and articles I have collected over the years.
I was very lucky to get a pair of tickets for three different events, so I am really looking forward to the summer games.

Books of gold leaf

For about 2 years I have been saving my empty books of gold leaf, most were 23.5ct gold, but also 12ct white, 22ct moon, silver, and other carats.

Here are 382 books which had 25 leaves per book, so 9550 leaves of gold.

Each leaf is 3" x 3" and the thickness is about 4 to 5 millionths of an inch or in metric that is 0.1 to 0.125 millionths of a meter (or micrometers, µm)

1000 leaves has about 16 grams of gold, so gives 152.8 grams, today the market price for pure gold is 27.99 GBP per gram, so a value of 4276.87 GBP

1 book covers about 1.975 sq feet so this gives an area of 754.45 sq feet of gold that I have used to make gilded picture frames in the last two years!