Dear Sirs,

I wanted to comment on a post on the HSS Forum for Visitors, open
questions, but it seems one has to actually be a member in order before
one can post anything to the visitors section, which seems fairly
counter-productive.

So I thought I'd post my comments on the use of gold paint on vellum
here instead.

Unlike iron, which is a ferrous metal and therefore prone to rust, fine
gold, which is available as traditional gold leaf or as fine gold
particles suspended in a medium like water colour, gouache or acrylic,
which can be applied with a brush, does not rust or tarnish. Pure gold
is inert and permanent. It does not tarnish or change its colour in any
way. Gouache is one of the most permanent of mediums. The best gouache
and acrylic mediums are usually very stable and do not yellow with
time.

Tablets of real gold water colour are available from well stocked art
supply shops. It is the equivalent of "shell gold", which is referred
to in old artist's recipes and formulas. It is and always has been used
for very thin lines and small illuminations but does not have the
continuous metallic surface necessary for use on large areas unless it
is burnished.

To make your own: Dump a book of gold leaf into a glass mortar with
honey and grind to a smooth paste with a glass pestle. Wash out the
honey with several changes of hot water, with a similar action to
panning for gold. Allow the gold to settle each time before you pour
the water out. Finally dry the remaining gold on filter paper and then
mix it with a weak gum solution. It can then be used on paper or
parchment as it was in  illuminated manuscripts, and can be burnished
to the highest brilliance using a amall polished agate.

I hope this will reassure anyone who has been surprised or concerned by
the inclusion of "gold paint" on Letters Patent.

If anyone would like to know a recipe for making your own gum solution
as well I would be happy to supply it.

If I had been able to reply to the post in the HSS Forum for Visitors,
as I thought was not only possible, but also presumably the point of
having that section at all, I would have sent this information there
instead.

Thanks - this is interesting. The method you provide makes an equivalent to
real gold water colour if I follow you correctly. Burnishing it will allow
the mixture to be used on larger areas or is there another way where gold
leaf is applied to the paper directly for large areas?? I seem to recall
seeing an illustration where a gouache surface which had been built up in
layers then had gold leaf applied on top giving a gold raised area on the
page. How do you make up the gum solution?

I have a question you may be able to clarify for me. I understand that for
painting of silver grey paint is used rather than a metallic equivalent to
gold leaf. Yet I have mid 19th century French costume engravings which
contain very metallic looking silver for armour etc. These areas of the
image haven't tarnished at all.

Susan

news:1121606473.797059.199890@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...

Dear Susan,

Gold leaf can be applied to any surface which has been properly sized.
The built up surface you describe was probably gesso with gold leaf
applied in the normal way. It was used extensively in tempera painting
before oils became widely used by artists, although they had been used
by artisans for centuries.  Tempera is pure pigment combined with egg
yolk. Its a fabulous technique which is done on panels prepared with
gesso which has been sanded to a perfectly smooth and almost luminous
surface. Many icons, which often had a lot of gold leaf, were painted
in this way.

There is a lot more info on the web about the art of gilding and the
various techniques involved than I can give you in this e-mail.

The gum solution for water colours and gouache is made up of the
following ingredients, in imperial measures I'm afraid, because the
book is very old.

2 ounces pulverized gum Senegal or gum arabic
4 fluid ounces boiling water, previously distilled.
1.25 ounces of honey water (hydromel) 1:1 or sugar syrup or glucose.
!.25 fluid ounces glycerine
2-6 drops of a wetting agent like oxgall
A quarter of a teaspoon of a preservative like sodium ortho phenyl
phenate or a few drops of 10% phenol solution.

You can add a couple of drops of oil of cloves as well if you want it
to smell nice!

To make it, pour boiling distilled water over the pulverised gum and
mix until it dissolves. If lumps persist, allow it to stand for a while
and then stir it again. Don't cook it. Add the other ingredients in the
order given. If you are using a dry preservative, mix it on a slab with
a pallette knife with a little of the liquid gum to a creamy
consistency before mixing it in. Strain the whole lot through a cloth.
A cotton sock over a jar of some kind is quite useful for this purpose
if you havn't got any cheesecloth or muslin.

For transparent paints (water colours) mix full strength pigment with
the medium to a smooth paste like consistency. Grind it with a glass
muller on a glass slab as thoroughly as you can. Add more distilled
water as necessary to maintain fluidity but allow it to dry back to a
paste like consistency before filling the kind of little containers
watercolours come in when they don't come in tubes. You can improvise
with bottletops or similar items.

Distilled water is necessary because the salts and other impurities in
ordinary water are not deirable and may react with the pigments or make
the colours cloudy.

Gouache is opaque water colour, made by adding inert pigments like
chalk or blanc fixe to the water colour recipe at the grinding stage.

Finally, it is possible to get fine silver leaf, which is pure silver.
Fine silver does not oxidise or tarnish like sterling silver, but is
too soft to make durable items out of. Enamellers use it under their
colours to avoid problems with oxidisation and firestain caused by the
copper content in sterling. So it is perfectly possible to make pure
silver paint in the same way as pure gold paint and to apply pure
silver leaf on any properly prepared surface in the same way as gold
and burnish it as well if necessary.

PS. Traditional gesso is made from whiting with pearl glue, but the
term is somethimes used for plaster-of-paris which is not the same
thing at all.

Hope all this is useful,

Eleanor

Dear Artificer,

I thank you for your post and am sorry you were unable to join the HSS,
however after reading your post I found it most helpfull and I hope you
don't mind I then posted it in the relevent thread:

For your further information.

My attention has been drawn to a post on another forum commenting on
our discussion here on metal paint, it seems to be a good post and so I
have decided to include it here.  As the poster (who ever they are)
complained that he could not post on this forum without joining I can
only conclude that he/she either did not want to join or for some
reason is unable to, as they were posting under an alias I cannot give
them the credit, however, what he says may well be true and although it
has not changed my own caution I will post it below for the benefit of
us all and my thanks goes to this anonymous person for his information.

I leave it to others to judge if this information is correct or not:

Unlike iron, which is a ferrous metal and therefore prone to rust, fine

gold, which is available as traditional gold leaf or as fine gold
particles suspended in a medium like water colour, gouache or acrylic,
which can be applied with a brush, does not rust or tarnish. Pure gold
is inert and permanent. It does not tarnish or change its colour in any

way. Gouache is one of the most permanent of mediums. The best gouache
and acrylic mediums are usually very stable and do not yellow with
time.

Tablets of real gold water colour are available from well stocked art
supply shops. It is the equivalent of "shell gold", which is referred
to in old artist's recipes and formulas. It is and always has been used

for very thin lines and small illuminations but does not have the
continuous metallic surface necessary for use on large areas unless it
is burnished.

To make your own: Dump a book of gold leaf into a glass mortar with
honey and grind to a smooth paste with a glass pestle. Wash out the
honey with several changes of hot water, with a similar action to
panning for gold. Allow the gold to settle each time before you pour
the water out. Finally dry the remaining gold on filter paper and then
mix it with a weak gum solution. It can then be used on paper or
parchment as it was in  illuminated manuscripts, and can be burnished
to the highest brilliance using a amall polished agate.

I hope this will reassure anyone who has been surprised or concerned by

the inclusion of "gold paint" on Letters Patent.

My name is Eleanor A J Murray. I did not try to join the HSS under an
alias of any kind. I tried to post a comment to the Forum for Visitors,
where this thread can be found, using a verifiable e-mail address, only
to discover that I had to become a member of the forum before I could
post any message at all as a visitor.

I then reapplied for membership of the HSS forum in my own name and
with a veriable e-mail address as required, simply in order to post my
comments about painting with "liquid gold". Possibly because it is a
Sunday, my membership has not been activated yet.

It is obvious however that ones need to join the HSS in order to
communicate with them. I did not give any permission for my post to
rec.heraldry to be posted anywhere on the HSS forum, which was done
without my knowledge or consent.

To avoid any further confusion, my website address is
http://www.gnucnu.com

I have never used an e-mail address from that domain to join the HSS or
its forum. For some reason they wrote to me at that address after I
asked for my other details to be removed from their members list for
reasons I have no intention of discussing.

With many regards to you all,

Eleanor A J Murray

PS
How many men are called Eleanor?

Dear Eleanor,
                  On your first post it is unsigned and so I had no
idea who you were, I did explain in my post on the HSS that I did not
know who the author was so of course I did not know who to ask for
permission, I assumed by your post that you were trying to be helpful
and in the same spirit I posted your post to the relevant thread on the
HSS forum.

I am grateful to you for your help and the information contained in
your post and I hope you will allow the post to stay, however, if you
wish I will be happy to remove it, and I sincerely hope that I have not
caused any offence as none was ever intended.

I am sorry for the difficulties you are having with your membership of
the HSS and I hope that you will be able to bring these to a
satisfactory conclusion.

Kindest regards,

Barry Harden of Cowdenknowes,
Baron of Cowdenknowes.

It is clear that the HSS operates a hyper-moderated, not to say censored
forum because it does not want the kind of robust discussions we
sometimes have here on rec.heraldry, dealing with questionable arms,
fake chiefs, feudal titles, and so on. But what we have in this case is
an informative and I think non-flame inspiring contribution on armorial
gold (small caps!). At moments like these the advantages of the
unrestricted ability to post on rec.heraldry are particularly obvious.

Sean Murphy
(Non-HSS forum member)

Dear Barry,

If you had checked the options you would have seen the name on my
e-mail address.

You are welcome to keep my opinions on gold leaf etc on your forum if
you are prepared to edit your post to remove the implied insults to my
integrity and use quotation marks for the text I supplied.

Any difficulties I have experienced previously as a member of the HSS
Forum are entirely the responsiblitity of the forum. I forwarded some
of the latest guidance on certain issues from the Home Office to them.

Perhaps that is why it is now necessary to be a member to ask a
question or post a comment in the visitors section. Seems a bit
paranoid to me.

Thanks to others for their support.

Eleanor

Dear Eleanor,
                   I will certainly do as you ask and I unreservedly
apologise for any implied insults my remarks were certainly not
intended as such.

Thank you for your patience.

Kindest regards,

Barry.