Gold Leaf Gilding

Antique Gold Leaf Gilding – The Traditional Way

Mahogany By Hand offers a full gilding service for your antique furniture.

We can offer a customised gold finish using a variety of leaf materials, including:

  • 22ct yellow
  • Rose gold
  • Sterling silver
  • Aluminium
  • Dutch gold
  • Bronze
  • Copper
  • and other choices

Furniture Gilding

Whether it is restoring an antique mirror frame, a picture frame or turning an old polished chair frame into a gilded masterpiece, we can complete at a competitive price. We can produce quality finishes which look new or can be antiqued for displaying stylish age.

Types of Gilding

Our craftsmen have extensive experience in both oil gilding and traditional water gilding for your custom made furniture finishes. Gold leaf  using water gilding is an art and an intensive skill for transforming your item into a masterpiece. It uses pure 22ct gold leaf and is a painstaking process of coating the furniture with layers and layers of gesso first. This acts as a cushion for the gold leaf to adhere to. But at the same time it tends to fill the low areas of carvings and therefore requires re-carving the entire piece on many occasions. This gesso is then layered on the high spots with “bole”, a very expensive fine French clay that comes in various colours. The bole acts as a further cushion for the gold leaf as it is burnished with agate stone to impart a shiny, pure gold shine. This is all a very laborious process but it imparts a stunning result. An alternative and cheaper method is to use oil gilding with dutch leaf; this is simpler but gives the similar impression of gold leaf. Painting or polishing the leaf with orange shellac makes an excellent seal. It is then aged with various coloured patinas to impart an antique appearance.

Furniture painting gilding

Contact us for more information about our product and services

Antiqued Process

gilding furniture

We specialise in gilding methods to produce stunning results on a range of items. We can create modern pure gold leaf (water gilding) or even age the gilt finish, so giving the appearance of antique patina and wear.

Other Choice of Finishes

If you require another type of custom made furniture finish, we can offer paintedupholstered antiqued, gilding and other superior finishes. We also use modern superior lacquers that are not only water resistant, but heat resistant and alcohol resistant. No need to worry about that hot coffee cup on the sideboard any longer!

Contact Mahogany By Hand for further information about our specialist gilding services.