What is poliment gilding?
Poliment gilding is the most traditional, but also the most demanding of all gilding techniques. Gilding got its name from the poliment, the bolus, which is a specially prepared clay that serves as a base for the gold leaf. With this gilding can only be worked on absorbent substrates, such as wood or stucco. The structure of a poliment gilding is formed by various primers, starting with the glue impregnation, to the chalk base and finally the poliment application. After that, the loose gold leaf is placed with the tip on the surface painted with a mixture of water and alcohol. After drying, the gold leaf is polished to a high gloss with an agate stone burnisher.
What is poliment gilding used for?
Poliment gilding is an interior gilding and is applied to wood or stucco. It is suitable for wood moldings, frame moldings, sculptures or sacred objects.
What is bolus?
Bolus is a specially prepared clay. To achieve a high quality poliment gilding, you need the poliment, which is a mixture of poliment glue and bolus, as the carrier for the gold leaf. For a bright gilding with yellow gold, yellow and red poliment is used to generate a warm color tone. In the classic poliment application, yellow is painted twice and red once.
What is gilding water?
Gilding water is a water-alcohol mixture that reactivates the binder present in the poliment, thus providing an adhesive base for the gold leaf.
When can the gold leaf be polished?
Whether the poliment gold leaf is ready for polishing depends on the room temperature as well as the air humidity, therefore there are no exact drying times that can be adhered to. Nevertheless, by carefully tapping the agate stone burnisher, the drying state can be determined. The lighter the tone appears when tapping on the gold leaf, the more polishable the gilding is.