I recently had the pleasure of working on an unusual gilding job - a beautifully carved ornate easel. Although the easel was stunning to begin with (as shown below), the owners wanted to make a show piece of it by gilding it in 23Kt gold.
Gilding such a large intricate piece was challenging with the 3 - dimensionality, and sheer size of the easel.
Once in the studio, I disassembled the easel, reducing it to much more manageable sized pieces, making it a lot easier to tackle. The next step was to strip back the old shellac and many years of wax build up, so that I had a clean surface to gild. This involved washing it down with 2 different solvents, 3 pairs of rubber gloves, and a lot of elbow grease!
Each section had to be oiled, gilded and cleaned before I applied the shellac to each side, then the process was repeated on the reverse side. Some of the more intricate sections were double gilded, as the rough texture of the timber prevented proper adherence of the gold leaf.
Once I had completed gilding all sections, similar steps were taken to tone the whole piece... toning, cleaning, then repeating on the opposite side.
It was a great feeling when I got to put the whole thing back together again and stand back to see the finished effect.
Tadaaah..!
