MANUFACTURE OF GOLD LEAF. 697 



tints. The book-cases are of rare woods, some paneled and carved, some painted 

 with fruit and flower designs on a white or gold ground. These are all you see, 

 the books being invisible. Rare, marble tables hold presents made the popes by 

 kings and emperors in the last century — Sevres vases from the King of Prussia ; 

 malachite from Prince Demidoff ; splendid candelabras from Napoleon I ; little 

 Prince Louis' baptismal font, sent by Eugenie so long ago; rare illuminated mis- 

 sals, whose covers are adorned with embroideries of gold and gem ; a wonderful 

 fald-stool from Tours, a mass of delicate carving in light brown wood, all ferns and 

 wandering vines and bell-flowers, and lace-like canopies over ivory saints six inches 

 high which jewel the sides — all these are but a little of the beautiful things you 

 see. You walk through hall after hall filled with rich and rare and curious arti- 

 cles, and get from every window glimpes of garden green or silvery fountain. 

 You look back from the last hall down a vista so long that you cannot distinguish 

 objects at the other end. The whole effect is of bewildering richness and beauty. 

 But all these museums are much alike, I suppose, to ignorant eyes. The first one 

 seen always stays in your memory as biggest and best. — Good Company, No. 6. 



MANUFACTURE OF GOLD LEAF. 



Gold beating appears to be one of the manipulations in the arts that cannot 

 be successfully imitated by machinery. Numerous attempts have been made to 

 substitute machinery for hand labor, in what appears to be the merely mechanical 

 work of beating, but hitherto without success. All the work of making gold leaf 

 or foil from the ingot or bar is hand labor, with the single exception of the rolling 

 preparatory to beating. 



The gold is procured usually at the United States assay office in New York, 

 its purity being "99 fine." For dental purposes even this hardly appreciable 

 alloy must be elimminated ; gold foil for filling carious teeth being absolutely pure 

 gold, or as nearly pure as possible. For gilding purposes the purity of the metal 

 varies with the use to which it will be assigned, and its color is also varied to suit 

 tastes or for particular purposes, by the use of silver or copper as an alloy. 



When the gold is rolled as .thin as practicable between highly finished and 

 hardened steel rollers, the ribbon thus made — about seven-eighths of an inch wide 

 — is cut into squares, each one of which is placed between layers of " gold-beat- 

 er's skin," an extraordinarily thin parchment, until a pile several inches high, or 

 thick, is made. This pile is then beaten with an iron hammer, with slightly con- 

 vex faces, on a block or an anvil of marble. In this beating is comprised nearly 

 all the particular art of this manufacture. The hammers used are of different 

 weights in the different stages of the process, the heaviest weighing about twenty 

 pounds each. The leaves in the pack have to be occasionally changed in position, 

 those nearest the outside changing place with those in the center as it is a singu- 

 lar fact that those in the center are widened and thinned much more rapidly than 

 those that come immediately under the face of the hammer. When the leaf is 



