THE GOLD-BEATER'S ART

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1937, Page 21

THE GOLD-BEATER'S ART

What is the secret of the fascination that-gold holds for.man? This may be a vapid question, for it remains that gold has fascinated man since pre-his-toric times, says a writer in the "San Francisco Chronicle." It is a strange fact that with all the changes which have taken place throughout the world during 70 centuries, gold has always held its place in the sun as the richest and most highly-prized of all metals. Gold is hard and cold, but it is also bright, like sunlight, a fact which may account for its enduring world-wide use spread by the practice of one of the most ancient of arts—the making of gold-leaf. Gold-leaf, for example, profusely adorned the richest parts of King Solomon's temple. Thirty-three centuries ago tall, tawny-skinned men in Egypt were swinging heavy hammers in a slow rhythm, beating out goldleaf to adorn the great double canopy which Lord Carnarvon recently found glowing above the mummy of King Tutankhamen. Throughout the ages gold-leaf has satisfied man's craving for the bright and shiny. It has blazed on Hindu thrones, on pagan'and saint, and today on shop windows and motion picture palaces. Although gold-beating is one of the oldest of arts it has not changed in any important particular. The goldleaf on King Tut's tomb was nearly as thin as the modern products, Roman gold-beating of the pre-Christian era could extend an ounce of gold into 705 leaves of three square inches each, each leaf being about one-seventy-thousandth of an inch thick. Commercial gold-leaf today is about one two-hundred-thousandths of an inch thick, not because the modern goldbeater is more skilful than the ancient workmae, but because the metal used today is purer than in ancient times. The gold-beater in a sort of inferno, hot, airless quarters made necessary for the protection of his product. "Let a breath of air get in here," he warns, "and your gold-leaf gets scratched by a speck of dust. Pound your cutch a little too long and the gold melts. Let the shoder get damp and the gold-leaf is full of wormlike holes." The gold-beater has special terms for describing his work, such as "cutch, shoder, mold, wagon, closing and taking a fly." The metal comes to the gold-beater in long ribbons, 24 feet long, one inch wide, and one 800 th of an inch thick. The ribbon is cut with scissors into one-inch squares, 210 of which make a cutch, each square of gold being placed between sheets of heavy rice paper or -vellum.' The.cutch. is then,

placed in an envelope of parchment which is laid on a block of granite or marble one foot square and. about two feet high. This stone rests on wooden blocks sunk into the ground for resiliency. The gold-beater's hammer weighs from 16 to 18 pounds and is usually handed down from father to son. With each lift of the hammer the cutch is given one turn. Every 15 or 20 minutes the beating is interrupted to prevent the gold from getting too hot. In that case the beater sits upon the cutch or puts it between blocks of cold steel to cool. This is called the "closing" process, at which stage the gold is in the form of foil. Each piece of the gold from the cutch is now cut into four pieces. Next the beater picks up what he calls a "wagon," which consists of two bamboo or cane blades in the form of a cross having a handle at the top. The wagon is pressed down on a sheet of the gold foil to cut it into four pieces, like cutting cookies out of a layer of dough. The foil is now ready to be made a shoder. A shoder is made from the lower intestines of bullocks. The intestines of 380 oxen are required to make a shoder of 950 pieces, each five inches square. Multiply the 210 pieces in the cutch by four, since each piece is cut into quarters, and there is a tool of 840 pieces in each shoder. Each time a shoder is used it has to be heated between the plates of a hot press to expel any moisture. If the gold is too dry, it becomes dull; if too damp, the drops of moisture make tiny holes in it. To dry or powder a shoder the beater blows through it with his breath. This is called "taking a fly." The beating of the gold takes three or four hours. It is then flattened out to cover four square inches per sheet. The shoder is again cut up into fours with the wagon, making a total of 3360 one-inch gold squares. These are sufficient for three moulds. A mold is put together just like a shoder and is beaten for four hours with a hammer weighing eight or ten pounds. This process completed, the gold is now ready to be trimmed into neat sheets three and three-eighths of an inch square and made up into books. Thus a precious metal, with the intestines of oxen, chalk from the cliffs of Cornwall, parchment, and blows from heavy hammers held in skilled hands, all contribute to the decoration of books, picture frames, arid ornaments. Today wherever gold-leaf shines is seen the product of an art that has been carried on without interruption since the days of the Pharaohs-