Gold Leaf or Gold Paint

General Heraldry subjects
John Olliff-Cooper
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Joined: 20 Apr 2017, 17:13
Location: Hampshire, UK.

Gold Leaf or Gold Paint

Postby John Olliff-Cooper » 12 May 2017, 11:11

Gentlemen:

Who is using what, and how?

I find dull golds in otherwise superb achievements to be very dispiriting. What do you use? Gold paint (which one?) burnished with agate, or gold leaf, burnished.

J.

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Chris Green
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Joined: 10 Jul 2012, 13:06
Location: Karlstad, Sweden

Re: Gold Leaf or Gold Paint

Postby Chris Green » 12 May 2017, 11:45

Or simply yellow. Historically it is most unlikely that or was executed in gold leaf, except for the most wealthy and only then for occasions when they needed to show off - the Field of the Cloth of Gold for example.
Chris Green
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Bertilak de Hautdesert

John Olliff-Cooper
Posts: 7
Joined: 20 Apr 2017, 17:13
Location: Hampshire, UK.

Re: Gold Leaf or Gold Paint

Postby John Olliff-Cooper » 12 May 2017, 15:10

Or shell gold - burnished? In reality gold leaf in the very small quantities required would be a negligible additional expense, and it's dead easy to apply. A book of gold leaves for £30 would last for years. Showing off - well yes, but post COA in battle I think showing off is what it's all been about.

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Chris Green
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Joined: 10 Jul 2012, 13:06
Location: Karlstad, Sweden

Re: Gold Leaf or Gold Paint

Postby Chris Green » 12 May 2017, 15:21

Gold leaf was certainly widely used in (and before) medieval times, though primarily for objects to be used indoors. Regrettably the long-term survivability of shields for warlike use was virtually 0, so how they were painted is largely a matter of conjecture. I have no idea how easy it is to create gold leaf without any machinery, but it must have been possible, as surviving icons and other items testify.
Chris Green
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Bertilak de Hautdesert

Bruce E Weller
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Joined: 13 May 2013, 11:46

Re: Gold Leaf or Gold Paint

Postby Bruce E Weller » 21 May 2017, 11:10

I was intrigued by the question of what pigments would likely have been available in the day.

Certainly the wealthy would have had gold leaf available (it was readily beaten, if I remember correctly, in books of ox hide or the like.

More to the point of my then question was what would the common "working" knight have had available in lieu of gold leaf? The most likely that my research threw up was Orpiment.

Orpiment (King's yellow) in use from antiquity; occurring naturally throughout the world as a low-temperature product of hydrothermal veins, hot-spring deposits, and volcanic sublimation ---much is stated to have been imported from Yunnan province China to Europe by way of Venice. Formulaic statement is As2S3 for Arsenic Trisulphide (or (US) trisulfide). Toxicity is low as is its solubility.


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