For those who do not know, I have been charmingly named by ‘deer’ friends and patrons as “The Gold Fairy” or “Gold Angel”. They are delightful nicknames as I do so love illuminating, gilding and working with pure gold and would add a bit of its purity and sparkle to just about everything if I could!
Gold is mentioned in all ancient cultures and religions of humankind and holds its precious value through millennia. Modern scientists and astronomers of the Harvard Astronomy Department have found that neutron star collisions produce all elements heavier than iron, such as platinum, palladium, mercury, lead, and gold. They do it efficiently enough that they can account for all the gold that has been produced in the universe. Gold is a true wonder of creation and the world seems a bit more beautiful with a touch of the light, warmth and shimmer only pure gold can bring!
With my 24k gilded creations I use gold in leaf form but also must create a pure 24k gold (Au:99.99%) paint by hand or what is also known as ‘shell gold’. It is called shell gold because many ancient artisans kept the precious paint in a delicate seashell as an individual palette similar to other ground pigment paints.
For centuries shell gold has been created by hand and primarily reserved for religious icon art or illumination done for royalty due to its delicate, laborious, and expensive nature. It is used most often in art to signify importance, preciousness or holiness.
Now shell gold can be purchased through gold leaf suppliers in tablets or gold powder can be obtained to mix with a medium such as gum arabic to create a ground gold paint.
While this commercially produced shell gold and preground gold is much more efficient to buy premade in tablet or powdered form, both have a dull inferiour grainy quality when produced as such en masse. The finest most smooth and luminous shell gold that is brilliant and can be burnished can only be produced by hand in small batches and is a highly guarded artisan skill to those few in the world who have learned to make it properly.
My personal learning and knowledge of the proper techniques for working 24k shell gold derives from years of deep intensive research of religious art techniques from around the world and deciphering ancient documents and manuscripts, many of which I had to patiently translate into English to be understood. After acquiring the knowledge of this skill from teachings across time and cultures, through much trial and error I have been able to perfect a technique that derives from old master artisan wisdom and secret customs to produce exquisite results.
Below you can see just some of the tools and containers I use to create my shell gold, perhaps someday I will offer a full tutorial to those who are interested. The example at the top of the page shows the iridescence you are looking to achieve only after a minimum of several hours of working with the gold by hand, to get the gold to its properly finely melted state ready for its washing and filtering phases and final stages of finishing.
Patrons and Peers have told me my goldwork is unlike any they have seen, and while I am humbly appreciative my goldwork is highly regarded, I know the quality is due to this high level of dedication to the purity of every step of the illumination and gilding process and heartfelt care required to create shell gold of such a high caliber. Properly hand-crafted shell gold is a several-day process that is very labour intensive and simply will not be rushed for superiour quality.
You can be sure with every work of art you receive from The Gilded Hart that much love, time, study, research, experience, expertise, and the finest materials have gone into the crafting of each custom heirloom piece. 💛
A live video of Karena washing the shell gold can be seen at The Gilded Hart Facebook page at: