Professional Gilding Materials

The gilding process sees covering a surface with a metal layer imitating gold. The aim of gilding is to provide the decorated objects with the noble appearance, splendour, and values of gold at a considerably lower price. Gilding materials include gold, silver, bronze, tin, zinc, aluminium, or metal alloys (so-called schlagmetal), applied with various techniques as leaf, power, paste, or paint. There are two basic ways of gold leaf gilding: pulment gilding and mixtion gilding. Pulment, or bolus, is an adhesive, which is polished and used to apply leaf layers by moistening the base with a layer of alcohol. Gilding on mixtion, which is a specially prepared oily varnish, sees adhesion of gold leafs in a way that their edges barely overlap and subsequent polishing of the gilded surface with specially framed precious stones.