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Customer came in a couple of weeks ago with a set of eight framed pictures of birds by John Gould. They had been framed in 1948 using an "interesting" technique. Essentially painting the reverse of the glass black to give a 50mm border and then gold coloured foil to form a 10mm inner border. From the outside the effect was quite good and finished off with a gold frame. One glass was broken so she wanted to renew the whole lot in a similar style. After a bit of head scratching I setttled on blackcore mountboard for the outer and gold coloured foil covered mountboard to replicate the inner border. Barrier paper will buffer the art from the non conservation board.
Dismantling the frames revealed a few problems, the worst was the lack of a spacer betweent the glass and artwork. Many of the pictures had fused into the black paint but eventually all were retrieved. All the stock arrived from Arquadia and I started to experiment with cutting the foil board.
Nightmare - Normal mountboard will forgive a slight overcut and invisibly heal itself. This stuff takes no prisoners and a fraction over is quite visible. Burnishing has no effect. I have spent hours fine tuning the keencut but just cannot get the cut to be consistent. Changing blades every four cuts does not help. I did try to deliberately undercut and hand finishing but that was not good either.
So, is there a secret to using this board ?. Would using a CMC solve the problem (I don't have one but will probably be able to find someone who does....). It also crossed my mind that I could apply gold leaf but is gilding mountboard possible or another can of worms ??.
Would appreciate anyones thoughts, custome is due back tomorrow to view progress
The secret is perfect calibration but yes, a CMC should do it with its eyes shut!
Gilded panels can be done with normal washline techniques just use a 'size' such as acrylic medium or even 'wundasize' instead of water and paint before applying leaf/foil. This one was done on leather effect board, hence the creases.
gilded panel.jpg
But if you are re-framing the lot and want to achieve a similar look - how about a reverse bevel mount and a gold fillet/slip?
Verre églomisé is the term used to describe the black and gold glass - very difficult to reproduce the effect well without going back to the original methods of gilding and painting with black bitumuse paint
I would have attempted this but not sure how the sharp edges and square corners were achieved. Also my knowledge of gilding is zero so this could be expensive baptism of fire. The foil board does produce a similar effect but as suggested I will see how the slip idea is received.
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I had a circular embroidery (in a sq frame) like this a while back. Glass painted on the back with a gold inner. Yes, the glass had cracked. Hardly suprising as the frame was possibly the smallest I had ever seen. About 5mm across the back and about 8mm deep. Somehow the glass/back and stretched embroidery had been shoe-horned in.
This type of mounting in somewhat of a lost art. No idea what the paint consists of. I replicated the effect with black/blackcore board with an powder gilded inner layer. Looked much better and spaced the new glass. I used the orig frame at the customers insistance. I extended athe rebate using the Robo Method for shadowboxes.
Hi Pat,
have done a couple of these over the years, sometimes they have another black band between the gold leaf and the image which makes things really tricky!
For your example though I would suggest paint sold by gilding and sign writers supplies called "1 Shot", an oil based paint which can be used on glass. First I would mask off the edge where the black meets the gold, then paint up the black part of the 'mount'. Then remove the masking tape and mask off where the inner gold edge will be, if you don't want to get into gilding this area just paint it with the "1 Shot" metallic gold paint, you don't have to worry about paint over the black a bit as it won't show through. Obviously the gold paint will have a different look to gold leaf but thats the easiest way I can think of replicating the effect.
An undermount can then go between the glass and image.
Just a thought, but maybe car spray paint could be used to replicate verre eglomise relatively easily and cost effectively?
Gesso is the man to give you some advice if you do want to gild it using the traditional technique...
I think the thing that impressed me most about the technique was getting the inner edge so sharp. Given this was done in 1948, would "masking tape techmology" have been up to the job or is there any other way it could have been done ?.
It would be wonderful if I could reproduce the effect on glass and I know my customer would be impressed. Just out of interest will gold leaf stick directly to glass or will I need to use gesso or similar ?. Also, any particular type of masking tape ?.
Using gesso before gilding would be fairly pointless - you would see white instead of gold . there are lots of ways to mask something that existed before modern tapes. The fact that they used an oily paint probably means that they masked with a water soluble paint.
The loose gold or silver leaf is stuck to the glass directly with gelatin or rabbit skin glue.
I think the technique was actually first developed for mounts (although I think the gilding on glass idea is much older) in the 18th century by a French print collector/framer, I doubt they had 3M masking tape back then so I would also be interested to know how they used to get such sharp lines!
I think any good quality masking tape would do, or some low tack tape used by sign writers.
Put a sheet on the glass - over the whole area if you want, but I'd say a few inches plus of the aperture would be OK.
Put the glass in your mountcutter and set the blade depth to almost nothing - it may still score the glass but I don't think that would be a problem as long as you don't overcut the masking film. It would be tricky but by testing on offcuts, without any masking film, you could set your stops accurately, just as you would have to if cutting a reverse bevel face up.
Cut the aperture then set the guide to 10mm less and cut again, this will leave you with an 'inlay' of masking film - peel it off and gild the revealed area. Then peel off the rest of the masking film margin, leaving just the aperture masked and paint the margin - wouldn't matter if the paint went over the gilding.
You may have to clean the glass after removing the film/before gilding/painting incase there is any adhesive residue left.
Ive done this many years ago, first mark out on a bit of mountboard the over all size of the glass and the window size ( black ) and also the gold line size, clean the glass and cover with masking film or magic tape from 3M. Place the glass on the mountboard lined up with your line, with a straight edge and a sharp blade cut through the masking film for both windows. Take the waste masking film off from the outside edge to the black line (the start of the gold) I used car spray to spray the black, (I've also done this in burgundy and gold). When the black is dry, (might need 2 coats) take the waste masking film off to the inner window (where the gold ends) and spay this with gold car spray. again when dry take the rest of the film off. Cut a mount from barrier board, with the window size a bit bigger than the gold line window, and place between the print and the glass. You could try gilding the gold instead of the gold paint.
Steve CEO GCF (020) Believed in Time Travel since 2035
Just ordering masking film, opaque black glass paint + everthing to do with gold leaf !. Also a book from Lion so I will be prepared if anyone round here shows interest in a hand gilded frame - unlikely but you never know.
I replicated the effect with black/blackcore board with an powder gilded inner layer. Looked much better and spaced the new glass. 
I used the orig frame at the customers insistance. I extended athe rebate using the Robo Method for shadowboxes.
. there are lots of ways to mask something that existed before modern tapes. The fact that they used an oily paint probably means that they masked with a water soluble paint.