Adventures in Gilding

As you may have surmised from my previous posts, I've been experimenting with goldwork on illumination, and perhaps, not too successful. I've made several attempts in trying to get the technique down, all with varying levels of failure until recently.

Having done my research in reading various online tutorials and referenced a few books, I set out to try gilding on parchment.In typical overambitious fashion, for my attempts I copied out two images - an acanthus leaf copied free hand from the Göttingen Model Book, and a stylised pomegranate traced from Italian Renaissance Textile Designs. 




For the leaves I attempted to use the glair as size, while for the pomegranate I used diluted PVA as size, for comparison and contrast. I mixed each with a bit of red gouache, the idea there being it will make an almost colourless liquid easier to see on the page. The images below can be clicked to enlarge, but even in the smaller images, the cracking of the gold over its base layer is clear.

After consultation with a friendly local laurel, I found that glair is more often used to create pigments for painting than as a size. Right so, scratch that for any further gilding attempts. I had also picked up a commercial modern, but the attempt I tried with that seems to have grown it's own little legs and walked off, so I can't show it here. But trust me, it didn't work either.

On a household day Thora suggested I try just painting up the parchment I was using with gouache, to make sure it wasn't so permeable as to not be usable for my purposes at all. A couple of splashes later, and while the end product is quite matt, it had no troubles adhering either.

One of the vital steps in gilding is reactivating the size by breathing on it, and allowing the moisture in your breath to make the glue sticky again. Lack of humidity not really being an issue in Ireland, a part of my mind starting wondering if I should make sure I could still fog up a mirror by hawing on it, or if I'd suddenly become undead while I wasn't looking.



The gouache test confirmed, I moved on to trying my new garlic size, to see if that would work any better than the previous attempts. Go on guess. I bet you know the answer. Again you can see the crackling in the attempts to lay it out. At this point I was becoming very frustrated. It's one thing to get things not-quite-right as you learn, it's another to be following the instructions from a book and still fail. 

You might notice, as I went on, my practice pieces became smaller. Granted I probably should have started out small until I got the hang of it, but it says something for the state of my confidence. So, one more try I told myself, and this time I checked the method in one of Thora's books, and found something that none of the previous tutorials had mentioned - sealing the paper.

So on my last attempt of the evening I drew out a tiny leaf, painted it meticiously with garlic size and waited for the longest thirty minutes of my life. Time up, I repainted with size and waited for the new longest time of my life; a whole hour. I carefully reactivated, applied leaf in three layers, burnished oh-so-carefully, and voila! A tiny, but perfect little gilded leaf!

This was the overview of my attempts but when I next have the kit out, I'll make sure to take pictoral notes of all my steps, in the hopes that this might help someone else get started. 

Making size - garlic juice

When I made the glair, I was attempt to make a period size; that is, a period glue for attaching gold leaf to parchment. Since that didn't go so well (which is going to be its own post), I decided to try another period size - garlic juice.

Initial set up was to dice up the garlic cloves and grind them in my mortar. I gave up after about 10 minutes of this, when it became clear that the garlic was more intent on escaping the mortar than obediently turning into mush. I think before I try this method again, I need to invest in an rougher mortar so the garlic has something to grip onto.



So I gave up and reached for *coff* ye olde stick blender. In mere dozens of seconds, garlic mush!

My first attemt to extract the juice from this was to try pushing it through a fine metal sieve. And while this did give me the first few drops of juice, very shortly afterwards a fine pulp starting coming through; not so great.

I remixed the fine pulp with the mixture in the sieve and this time tried sqeezing it by hand in a piece of muslin. Squeezing too hard here produced the same problem, but another quick reset, and this time I had liquid gold!

The tiny jar of the right is the product of two whole bulbs of garlic. I didn't press the pulp completely dry, as I intended to pop it into a jar and leave it in the fridge until my next stir fry. I do hope this size works. I shall be trying it out shortly!

Making Glair

I found a few tutorials on making glair for use in illumination online, and while very good they didn't answer one question. So I have to make it for myself.

For those of you that haven't looked up the other tutorials, making glair is a very simple process. First, you need to seperate egg whites from the yolks, being very careful not to allow any yolk fat into the white. Then you beat the egg whites until they're stiff, the same process as making meringues. Or if you don't know how to make meringues, whip the egg whites until they've changed from a liquid to a white froth. When you think it's stiff enough, tilt the bowl gently; if the froth starts to slide, then you need to whip a little bit more.

When my egg whites were whipped, I covered the bowl with a tissue and left it overnight, on the counter out of the fridge. The next day, the glair liquid can be gently poured out of the bowl and into a jar for keeping. I opted to throw a clove into the jar too, to keep the smell at bay as the glair ages.


And the question that I wanted answered? What happens to the fluff after the glair is poured off? I thought it might still have been similar to whipped egg whites, but it turns out it's more like medieval styrofoam. Good to know.

More Muff Work

Due to the adverse weather conditions around the globe (too cold to sew or too warm to work with fur), the Fabulously Fashionable Fur competition has been extended! So here's an update on how the progress has been on the muff.



I'd already cut a layer of linen to the shape of the fur piece, so I cut the velvet just large enough to hem around the linen.My intention is to whip stitch the edge of the fabric piece to the edge of the rabbit fur, trapping the velvet raw edges in the centre.





That complete, I took the pieces of white linen with the goldwork template and tacked them to the velvet with a strong black thread, for contrast, so it would be easier to identify and remove when the goldwork is complete. I positioned the goldwork approximately an inch in from each edge.

 



And then is was time to mount the fabric up in my new embroidery frame. Alright, it's no medieval stretch frame, but it's doing a good job of keeping the fabric taut. And it collapses back into a carry case, making it very easy to bring to events to me (and shall be testing that very use quite shortly). 

Now, I will confess, I have started the goldwork. And it is shiny, but oh-so-slow. I'm trying to get a little more done so it can look even more impressive before I show it off. As it is I'll have to do significantly more than an hour an evening to be finished by the end of February.

Muff Progress

Well, just because my supplies aren't going to get here on time, doesn't mean I should put the project aside completely!

As I mentioned last time, I'd finally made up my mind and selected a pattern to embroider, so the first step was to trace that out of the book. Once I traced it out, I outlined it again with a fine black marker so the design would be easier to see through the linen.

My original plan was to use a natural coloured linen, but my light box wasn't powerful enough to make the pattern distinct through that, so I had to switch to using white linen. At least a light box is a far cry from the methods used in period. Though in a previous project when I couldn't find said light box, I've had to use sunlight against a window, and I can tell you, it gets uncomfortable very quickly.

Image from the book 'Embroiderers' by K. Staniland

I tapped the linen strips to the light box with masking tape as I worked to ensure it remained taut as I worked. I felt like eating the first strip, but the second went much quicker.

And voila, the prepared product! Each strip is the length of the rabbit fur I'll be using to make the muff. The next plan will to make some buttons, cloth ones this time I think, and then I'm back to waiting until my supplies arrive.

 Must plan my projects better in the future.

Fabulously Fashionable Fur

Well, the year is off to a less than stellar start, in that I think I've done myself out of the running for the Realm of Venus mini challenge.

My original plan was to make myself a fur lined muff, in the Venetian style. My materials were as shown in the pic, a large, oh-so-soft grey rabbit fur which I posess thanks to Alyss of my household spying it during her xmas market shopping.A linen lining and a red crushed cotten velvet as the fashion fabric. The final touch was going to be some goldwork embellishments, in a design I finally choose from Italian Renaissance Textile Designs. The selling point of this final decision was that two bands of goldwork weaving up each side of the muff would allow a central section clear from me to add my heraldry when it gets approved (it recently passed the first stage).

However, December happened. And flu. Let's just blame the flu. I didn't order my goldwork supplies until the new year so I'll be lucky if it arrives a week before the competition is due to end. I can sew quickly, but on my second ever goldwork project? I'm not that good, not yet. It'll get completed anyway, I would love to have something to keep my hands warm while I watch a tourney. And even if all my research is pointing towards black being a more period colour, I guess I could make one to match the hat I already have? Or make two; one black, one red and then make a red velvet bonnet to match this muff. Both would tie in well with my zimarra at least.

Nothing I can do for the moment anyway. Ho hum.

The Festival of Fools was a fantastic event, if I do say so myself. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and there have already been one or two suggestions that it should run next year. That's quite enough encouragement for me!

The above picture is that of the finished marbles! I wasn't able to say while I was working on them for fear of giving the game away, but they had been planned all along to be the prizes for the event. Unfortunately, one or two people mentioned that they looked more like candies than marbles, and looking at them in the picture above, maybe I should have thought to put warning label with them.

But I'm not too unhappy with how they turned out. I used charcoal for the black, chalk for the white and paprika for the red, all mixed in with shellac and painted on in three layers to build up colour. I then finished each marble with two more layers of shellac. Unfortunately, the surface I dried them on wasn't the best, so a close up peek at the marbles will show spots where the paint has peeled. Next attempt will be better.

Being able to sit down during the day is a sign of a well run event I'm told. So I used my "relaxing" time to finish off a beginners goldwork kit I got at Yuletide University just gone. The teacher, one of the most accomplished embroiderers I know, encouraged a freestyle approach, so I tried a slightly different technique with each "rose". The one of the left, the last I did typically enough, turned out to be my favourite, but I am happy overall with how the whole piece turned out. Now I just have to decide how to mount the finished item. 

And finally...

Don't I look fabulous! Never before had I realised just how damn good I could look in a low backed dress. Yes, yes, lets just ignore the fact that I'm being a hussy by wandering around in just my camica...
This picture serves an entirely different purpose though, and that is just how low the back of my camica is. Granted, it's exagerated for the purpose of this picture, but after it was taken I went back and examined the back of my court gown and yep, there's an area that is starting to get damaged by sweat and oils from my skin. I'm glad I've realised this now, as its put a new camica and finally getting around to making a partlet or three that much higher on my to-do list.