How to clean guilding

[unknown-user]

I have a Lyon and Healy stlye 17 gold and I was wondering if there

is any way to clean the guilded parts of the column and base.

[carl-swanson]

Don’t even THINK of cleaning it yourself.

[unknown-user]

Thanks.

[barbara-brundage]

Carl is totally right that for big cleaning you need a pro.

I have had some success with getting rid of surface dirt by using the old-fashioned

method–bread. Get a loaf of icky white squishy wonderbread type bread (Not good strong

bread, like sandwich bread), and tear off a small piece of the white part. Press this very

gently onto the gilding and it will bring some of the dirt and dust with it when you pick it

back up. Be very, very careful and try it on a very inconspicuous place first. If the gesso is

damp, you can pick up the gold as well as the dirt, so utmost caution is advised. It’s very

labor intensive, but it does help a bit. A soft untreated (most dusters have endust type

junk in them these days, so investigate before buying) feather duster or a very soft

makeup brush will brush out any crumbs. Don’t use a duster that has feathers with

pronounced spines in the feathers, and not a lambswool duster.

This isn’t going to do anything about fingerprints or big dirt, and frankly, most places will

suggest

[barbara-brundage]

I should have added, never, never touch the gold. Wear gloves when you do this, because

it’s just human nature to reach for the column when you need to turn the harp or resituate

yourself.

[unknown-user]

Hello Beth, Prehaps the Society of Gilders could be of assistance in locating a gilder in your area. They have a website at http://www.societyofgilders.org. Maybe even Lyon and Healy could make a suggestion, or contact a curator at your closest art musuem. I wouldn’t attempt a cleaning either without consulting an expert as I would be afraid to damage the gesso and bole underneath the leaf. Best of luck to you, CeCe Nelson

[barbara-brundage]

Just a caution about hiring a general gilder–you would need one who does seriously

museum quality restoration and who has a very thorough understanding of water gilding.

The average frame/architectural/sign gilder does something quite different.

FWIW, the older L&H harps are double-gilded with double leaf in a weight which is, alas,

no longer available.

[barbara-brundage]

One other thing about cleaning–in most cases the problem is the dust and oil that has

adhered to/damaged the lacquer, and there’s no easy solution to that, even from a pro.

AFAIK, there is really no way to remove just the lacquer without taking the gold with it. I

recently saw a video from the Cleveland Museum of Art in which their curator said flat-out

that while restoration techniques for micro-removal of the upper layers of varnish on

paintings have become very much more sophisticated in recent years, there still isn’t much

they can do about removing just the lacquer from gilding.

Last time I checked a factory regild from L&H was $20,000. I presume it’s substantially

more than that now.

[Tacye]

Gilding is complicated and as Carl pointed out you really don’t want to go wrong- so asking L&H and trying anything they suggest on a small area is probably the best bet.

Gilding is traditionally done by one of two methods- water gilding or oil gilding and they react very differently to various cleaning methods.

[barbara-brundage]

One thing that L&H usually suggests you want to stay far away from, and that’s the touch-

up pen they were pushing for a while (don’t know if they still do). It is not gold, but gold

paint, and in a couple of months the areas you use it on will look much worse than the

dings did.

[carl-swanson]

It’s so nice to hear some intelligent conversation about gilding from harpists.

They usually have no idea how it’s applied or how delicate it is.

[unknown-user]

I e-mailed L & H on this and here is the response:

If you simply want to remove dust that is in the carving, we recommend

using a large brush such as a stencil brush that is available from our

accessory department or from our website http://www.harp.com. We would

definitely not suggest using any kind of polish or liquid cleaner on the

gold parts of the harp.

Charles Moore

Lyon & Healy

[unknown-user]

Also someone mentioned water and oil guilding, which method is commonly used today and in the past?

[barbara-brundage]

Oil gilding is used on Erards and most earlier harps. L&H, Wurlitzer, Carl’s harps are water

gilded. (I believe Howard Bryan uses oil gilding now, but am not totally sure about that.)

L&H in their heyday brought water gilding to a very high state of perfection–you won’t

find many twentieth century gilders to equal their best work.

New gilding, whether water or oil,

[barbara-brundage]

Actually, I would presume that Carl’s gilder uses water or oil depending on what was on

the harp orignially.

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