Hi Dennis,

Gilding has been known for centuries, and certainly many of the French instruments used it. A lot of furniture of the 17-18c period was gilded.

Although you ask about French instruments, it’s a good question in general. Gold was and is expensive, and cheaper alternatives were used also. For example, Denzil Wraight explains the decoration on a Grimaldi he made:

http://www.denzilwraight.com/sicilian.htm

"The decoration on the case was executed with an old technique that employed silver leaf over gesso and bole grounds and a changing varnish to make it appear like gold. This was commonly done since gold was more expensive than the labour required to apply it. Many pieces of antique "gold leaf" will be found on close inspection to be silver leaf with a changing varnish. In the Nuremberg instrument pieces of undissolved "Dragon's Blood", which imparts a reddish colour, can be seen in the varnish. The effect is more brilliant and reflects more light than the modern variant using transfer gold leaf."

Obviously the varnish is used both to change the colour to golden and to stop the silver from oxidising.

HIgh material costs often affected decoration choices. The vivid Vermilion paint we see in French instruments came from an expensive pigment, and many instruments used what is often referred to as bole instead, a cheaper, but less brilliant red colour instead.

If you are looking at gold leaf on furniture, note that the underlying colour was often used to give subtly different shades of gold, and different thicknesses of gold give different colours also. For example you can buy what is called green gold leaf, or lemon gold leaf, and so on. So gilding can have a wide range of effective shades.

Andrew



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