2 tables and query on 6kt leaf

[jeth williams]

Hi All, Couple of tables I recently completed, thought I’d post some photos. Sincere thanks to everyone on this forum. Have found it a great source help and often the missing piece of the jigsaw of information I need so to speak is on this forum.

The coffee table uses 12ct, 23ct red gold, 22ct and 18ct green and black paint

coffee table is 70cm x 70cm
meeting table is 106cm D

The meeting table uses mainly 22ct gold although the centre circle uses 23ct red. The outside first 3 lines of blue black and white forms the Estonian flag. The etching in the gild of the dancing characters round the outside are taken from Estonian song festival The internal pictures, one is of the old town in Tallinn, the other is the main square in Tartu, (southern university town, second biggest city in Estonia

Question I have if anyone has some advise on much appreciated:

Noticed recently 6ct white gold leaf available for sale. Have used 12ct white gold or palladium instead of silver when concerned about risk of tarnishing. Wondered if anyone has any opinion on use of 6kt leaf and risk of it tarnishing. as presume the silver to gold mix used to make it must be reasonably high on the silver side.

Many thanks

Jeth

[erik winkler]

Hello Jeth,

I like your tables.
Blue is a good color to use with goldleaf.

[jeth williams]

Thank you Erik. Nice seeing some of your good work on here too.

Jeth

[Roderick Treece]

Jeth,
Nice work. How did you get the images in the gold ?

[BruceJackson]

Nice work Jeff,
Good to see.

I assume you etched the lines in the back of the gold and backed it up with black. It's a nice techniques, but I found it quite time-consuming. Also, I found you need to take a lot of gold off to get visual strength into the engraved image. When you're working on the back and think, "yes, that will be dark enough", but once you look at the front, it looks thin and weak...Did you find this to be the case too?

As for 6kt...I haven't used it but it stands to reason it will tarnish more than 12 carat white gold. I'd water-gild with it, but I would avoid using it with gold-size ....same with silver.

Even 12ct isn't great for the long term tarnishing...but you get away with it on glass.

[jeth williams]

Thanks Roderick and Bruce.

Rodrick the images are put in as Bruce has kindly described. In fact Bruce’s own website is a great source of help which I often refer back too. Thanks Bruce and also for the thoughts on 6ct.

I will put a bit more info here on what I did, there are many people here with good experience who may want to suggest alternatives. I love gilding, but its not my main job, if I can get to make it my main job I will do.

I took digital photos of the locations, and then selected the best photos of each place to use.

I printed out the photos to the size I wanted on a photo printer. As it happened near A4 size. The printed photos were traced using regular tracing paper, not all of it traced but certainly main lines that define the image, but I guess there is no reason why you can’t trace it all…

As Bruce has said the etching is done in to the back of the gold. So You turn the image on tracing paper over, so when you etch it, the image will show the right way round when looking through the glass from the front.

I used a page of carbon paper on the surface of the gold leaf with upturned tracing paper on top of carbon paper, then use a pencil to go over all the lines again on the tracing paper and the carbon paper below it transfers the outlines of the image on to the gold. You might want to test the best amount of pressure to give the pencil, but it generally transfers enough of the image on the gold for you to get an idea of where you need to etch. I fixed the carbon paper to the tracing paper while doing it to keep it in same place and the carbon paper to a non gilded area of the glass. I find scotch magic 811 tape pretty good for that sort of thing as its designed as removable tape and comes up easily off glass and off the top of dried paint without pulling any. Its easy to pull up and re-stick it down as well for adjusting.

Taking away the carbon and tracing paper I then got the main lines showing on the back on the gilded area in pencil, I then used them as my reference to start etching out. I mainly stuck to using the point of a crosshead screwdriver for the centre images, but any metal point I think will do as long as its blunt ended. I’ve also got a small metal burnish tool which has a wider flat point so you can make thicker lines which I used for the dancers. you don’t need to use much pressure and once you’ve got your main lines in you can then add on free hand so to speak and be a bit more creative with it. One thing i found is you really do need to look from many different angles to see where your pencil lines are to etch and looking at the glass on deciding if to take off more gold. I actually found slightly less light using a lamp rather than main lights in the room where better for me to see where the pencil lines were on the gold as otherwise the main light reflected to much off the gold and blinded you to seeing what you were doing / where your lines where...day light of course maybe good, but we are pretty north up here and don't get much daylight at this time of year.

The glass was 106 diameter which is a reasonable size, so to avoid placing my hands onto the glass when transferring the image or etching I used 6 A4 notebooks of equal size 3 to a side stacked either side of the glass and stuck a metal decorators paint roller extension pole across the glass but resting on the pads of a4 paper to although me to rest my hand on the pole while transferring the image and etching. but not touch the glass. I used a dark blanket to rest the glass on to, to stop anything scratching the front while working and helps give contrast to the areas for you to see what your etching.

The etched out area was then backed with black paint. I guess you can use any colour and more than one colour but of course black and gold always goes well together and you do need a strong colour really. On this I think I already had enough colours going on so decided to keep it black. I did think about backing the etched area with a different colour leaf instead of paint but decided against it as I think would of needed white or lemon gold to stand out enough and didn’t really want to introduce more colour to the table. As Bruce says you do generally need to take off more gold than you think. On the two centre images I’ve kept the lines reasonably thin as the dancers use thicker lines and didn’t want the images in the centre to be too over powering, so its nice that you can see the dancers from a distance on the table but not really the images in the center its only when you walk up to the table about half a metre away from it or sit at the table that the images in the centre become apparent an clear to you, but the dancers you can see on the table some distance away.

The dancers where put in same way just thicker etching point, and I used a repeat I think of 5 or 6 dancers. There slightly different because I put some different decoration on some of the dresses associated with Estonian dancing.

It does clock the hours up etching out gold for sure.

Jeth

[erik winkler]

Jeth,

That was a very detailed explanation you gave there, I bet Roderick will be pleased with that one.
Did you see my post 'no news' post about the Würzburg mirror room?
There they have a great detailed etching done in the goldleaf.

Erik

[jeth williams]

thanks I had not seen the 3D link view till now. Amazing room.