[Natasha]

Hello every one!
There is a question, I would like to use gold foil and powder, but I cannot find an on-line shop where I can buy this treasure! I saw a gold foil book on E-bay, but they were made in China, so, I was not sure that it was true gold.... Please help me!!!!!!!!!!

[DanM]

most of the karat leaf is made in Germany or Italy, you should be able to find something online. if not,here are a couple links in the USA that ay help you.

Goldleaf Co.

Dick Blick Art Supply

[Janel]

Hmmm, I purchased my gold leaf sheets from an art supply store in the big city, it was called Dick Blick then. Only one kind was offered there, and I do not think that it is a composition (not all gold). The gold and other powders, I purchased from a craft supply store in the little town where we buy groceries and do our banking. That little store is no longer in business.

Here we go: Dick Blick-Gold Leaf for pure gold leaf. I did not check to see if they ship internationally, but being on the internet now...maybe it would work.

I don't know about the powders yet. I'll look for the brand name when I am at the studio. Good luck.

Janel

[Natasha]

Thank You, I'll try to get!

[Jim Kelso]

Often, enamel(vitreous) suppliers will sell gold and silver foil(or leaf) to be used under fired enamel. You can check with jewelry enamel suppliers in your local(perhaps Ukraine).

[Malcolm]

Natasha, on Oct 25 2006, 11:46 AM, said:

Hello every one!
There is a question, I would like to use gold foil and powder, but I cannot find an on-line shop where I can buy this treasure! I saw a gold foil book on E-bay, but they were made in China, so, I was not sure that it was true gold.... Please help me!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Natasha,

Gold leaf is made in a lot of places, including Europe, Japan, China, etc. If you want to try it, find a supplier that specializes in gold leaf, or you probabily could get it from a local sign supply company. Some sign shops still do gold leaf work, and the suppliers almost always carry good quality leaf.

I used to do a lot of gold leaf work, mostly making carved wood signs, as a freelancer for a number of different sign shops; but the work is deminished because computer driven routers have deminished demand for hand carved signs.

Gold leaf is not an inexpensive material, and getting used to working with it takes some time. It is difficult to work with mainly because it is so extreemly thin and light weight.....so thin that if you hold a leaf up to the sun, light comes through it.

Be well.

Malcolm

[Doug Sanders]

Sepp Leaf Products in New York City www.seppleaf.com is a respected supplier within the art conservation community for the restoration of frames and other gilt surfaces. They've got a large variety of gold 'colors'

[musket]

Gold foil and gold leaf are two different things. Foil, used by enamelists, is considerably thicker and a lot more expensive since there's more gold in it.

Sepp is a terrific outfit and they sell a mind boggling array of leaf in many different shades from many different manufacturers. They prefer not to sell direct and will probably ask you to buy through a distributor, and very few of their distributors carry everything in the Sepp catalog. But their own Monarch brand is excellent, comes in a wide variety of carats and shades, and is widely available from many online retailers.

For all around use, unless you want a yellow or lemon gold I have no hesitation recommending Monarch Rosa Noble. 23.75 KT, just the slightest tinge redder than 24 KT, and not too hard to handle (all leaf is extremely thin but some brands are thinner than others, for example the beautiful leaf made in France by Dauvet, which I prefer above all others for color but which is much harder to handle than Monarch).

Gold powder is not easy to find. You may have to go through a specialist in supplies for Japanese lacquer.

[Doug Sanders]

I guess I got lucky with Sepp- they didn't refer me on to a distributor for the book of Monarch leaf I purchased a year or two ago.

[musket]

Doug Sanders, on Oct 30 2006, 08:49 AM, said:

I guess I got lucky with Sepp- they didn't refer me on to a distributor for the book of Monarch leaf I purchased a year or two ago.

They've tightened up their policies since then. They'll still sell direct, but only with reluctance (especially now that NY Central Art Supplies carries their entire line), and I doubt they would ever sell just one book of leaf direct. A pack, maybe. But even if you walk into their office during their limited retail hours, the minimum order is a hundred dollars.

I would think that Natasha would be better off ordering from a source in the UK or Europe, considering her location, but the Sepp catalog is free and very much worth getting just for the info it contains. Among other things, it lists gram weights for every type of leaf they sell.

Gram weight, which is to say the weight of 1000 leaves, is an important factor to consider. This is really the best guide to the relative thickness of the same type of leaf from various manufacturers, and that can make a considerable difference in ease of handling.

For example, Monarch 23.5KT Red has a gram weight of 18. Dauvet 22.9KT Rouge weighs 14 grams. I much prefer the color of the Dauvet, which is a redder gold due to a higher content of copper (4.5% as opposed to 2.5%), but their Rouge is dicier to gild with than Monarch Red.

So-called double leaf is not twice as thick as regular leaf btw. The thickest leaf available, far as I know, is Sepp Special. Their 23.5KT Antique, also a red gold though it does contain some silver as well as copper, has a gram weight of 22.

Sepp also sells nice color charts for various manufacturers, with actual samples of each type of leaf. There are many, many kinds of leaf which differ greatly in shade from the usual, depending on the percentage of silver, copper, palladium or even platinum in the case of Sepp Special Platora I, which is 99% gold, 1% platinum and the thickest of all, with a gram weight of 28.

[Doug Sanders]

Thanks for the tech talk. Details are always appreciated

[musket]

Doug Sanders, on Oct 30 2006, 10:21 AM, said:

Thanks for the tech talk. Details are always appreciated

Back in the mid-80s I lived next door to a ninety year old gent who'd been a professional gold beater almost all his life. He was frail but still had forearms like Popeye. He enjoyed taking about the trade.

The trad way of making gold leaf is truly arcane. Did you know that the prefered tool for applying brime (a powder made of some kind of volcanic ash and various "secret ingredients") to gold beater's skins (made from the intestinal membrane of an ox) is the hind leg of a Russian hare?

I didn't.

[PS_Bond]

A European source is http://www.cooksongold.net

Bought some a little while ago, only to later realise that gilding leaf is too thin for keum boo... Ah well, there's other uses for it still.

Powder I'm not sure about - I've got some imitation gold powder that I use for some applications, but it isn't the same thing.

HTH

[Janel]

I also have gold powder, which does not say that it is imitation or real. I purchased it in a craft supply store, along with silver and bronze powders. Is there any way to test it to see if it is real or imitation?

[Jim Kelso]

The test is: if you got it from a craft supply store, it's not gold.

The Japanese have a vast array of flakes and powders made for traditional makie lacquer. I have a little stash from when I was in Kyoto and went to a specialist that had operated for generations. The variety is amazing. They gave Jean and I a very special tea that was an honor but it tasted like pond-water! I think the language barrier makes it very difficult to buy unless you are there. I'll give some more thought to this. There are industrial powders available if you do a search.

[Janel]

Shhh, lets not tell anyone that the gold powder I've used is not real. I will remain hopeful that it is real enough to not self destruct in the pieces that contain some of it

[Jim Kelso]

It's probably a bronze which if protected from the atmosphere should retain it's color " a good long while".

[Jim Kelso]

You can see the Japanese leaf making process HERE
I haven't looked closely, but it would appear essentially identical to how it is done elsewhere.

[musket]

Never tried it, but "Practical Gilding" by Peter and Anne MacTaggart gives directions for making gold powder from leaf skewings. Basically you add a mess of skewings to some honey and work it with a muller and slab, then decant several times. They say that a tablespoon of skewings will yield about 0.2 gm of powder.

Never tried this either, but it might also be possible to obtain gold powder by buying some shell gold (23KT gold powder bound in gum arabic, used for manuscript illumination) and soaking the gum arabic away. Shell gold is easy enough to find. I use it on my hummingbird carvings.

[DanM]

gold powder supplier.

gold powder