Barbara- There isn’t a finish in the world that won’t change color over time. Some take more time, some take less. Also, the conditions in which the finish is kept has a large bearing on this. If it’s in a sunny window, it will deteriorate faster. A smoker in the house, or salt air will also cause the finish to change.
If the gold harp is never moved, the gold never touched, the humidity constant between 40% and 60% roughly, it should last indefinitly.
I have a gilder here in Boston who is a genious at restoring the gilding on banged up harps. Many times I have brought her the parts of a gold harp that was badly dinged, scuffed, abraded, and whatever else one can do to a harp, and when she is done, the harp looks like nothing had ever happened to it. But each regilding job is different. When she gets an instrument in, she has to first do some tests to see what she is dealing with. Is the gesso deteriorating, loose, or cracked? Has the gilding already been repaired? Many other questions as well have to be answered before she can decide what she has to do with the instrument and how much it will cost. Trust me, you don’t want anyone but an expert to work on gilding.
Here’s an example of what can happen when gilding is not done correctly.
A client of mine brought her gold 23 to me this year. It was actually my first harp, built in 1917. It had been rebuilt many years ago(but after I sold it) by a VERY FAMOUS COMPANY, and they had completely regilded it. The gilding was looking pretty sad now, some 25 years later. She wanted the gilding repaired.
My gilder studied it and ran some tests. She almost turned white as she did this. She kept muttering under her breath ‘Oh my God, Oh my God.” Rule number one of repairing gilding is that you cannot put new gesso on top of old gesso. It won’t stick. You have to clean old gesso off right down to bare wood and then start again. The VERY FAMOUS COMPANY’S gilders had removed most but not all the old gesso and then re-gesso’d the entire column. Now, 25 years later, the gold and gesso were pealing off the column in long strips! My gilder, who thought originally that this would be an extensive repair job told the client that the only way to repair this was to strip the entire column (again) down to bare wood and start over.
A less experienced gilder, or a con artist would have given a low-ball price and done repairs that would have lasted less than a year. There are so many things that can go wrong with gilding that you should not shop around for the lowest price, but rather the most experienced gilder.
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