Gold leaf is the best material available for decorative your front entrance. Typically, we install traditional gold house numbers on the interior surface of your clear glass transom. Gold house numbers require about five hours to finish. We are available Monday through Friday. First, we arrive at your home at 7 am to being work. The outline and shadow are applied with black backup paint and then allowed to dry. Next, we use a water-based gelatin size, which we spray onto the glass. Next, the artist applied the gold leaf with a gilder’s tip brush. Again, the gold leaf needs time to dry, and then we polish it with cotton. We repeat the process at least two times. Sometimes a third layer is required to fill the numbers with gold leaf.
Be patient, avoid Holidays!
Complete coverage is critical. Any tiny holes or cracks in the gold car ruin the numbers. Also, cracks or holes would allow black paint to show through the gold, which is not good. Finally, we back up the interior of the gold leaf numbers with black backup paint. Once the paint has dried, we remove the excess gold leaf around the letters with an eradicating brush. We take great care during every phase of the process. Patience is necessary with this type of detail-oriented work!
With proper care, your gold house numbers can last a lifetime. Never spray cleaners directly onto the numbers. Instead, spray some cleaner onto a rag or paper towel and carefully wipe the glass but not wipe the letters. If the back of the black backup paint becomes dusty, a feather duster can gently clean them.
4209 looks great with 23 karat mirror gold leaf
Eradicating gold house numbers
This photo shows the method in progress. We eradicated the excess gold leaf around 0 and 9. However, the 4 and 2 still need to be cleaned up. The final part of the process is the removal of excess gold.
A brief history of gold leaf
The purpose of gold leaf was always to embellish and honor objects and people. The gold leaf tradition dates back to ancient Egypt. The pharaohs used it to adorn sculptures and cover the rooms in which they buried their deceased. Ancient Greeks loved gold leaf too. They used it to decorate statues. Traditional illuminated manuscripts incorporate various precious metals. The Byzantine Empire used gold powder in paintings to illuminate halos and other desirable objects. But gold leaf is not only popular in religious settings. For example, famous chefs cover food with edible gold leaf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_leaf
Golden Slumbers kiss your eyes
‘Golden Slumbers’ is a lullaby from Thomas Dekker’s 1603 famous play, Patient Grissel. The Beatles used parts of this poem as the lyrics for their song of the same name on the Abbey Road LP,
Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,
Smiles awake you when you rise;
Sleep, pretty wantons, do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby,
Rock them, rock them, lullaby …
