Celie Fago has written a wonderful, chatty little book on her approaches to gilding pmc with gold foil, based on the Korean technique of keum boo. I liked this much better than the idea of buying gold pmc, which is appallingly expensive and must be fired higher than a temperature than the quartz sheathed elements in my kiln are happy going; or the gold paint, because beadmakers use leaf and foil. Gold leaf is something I already had on hand, and I really liked the idea of not having to go out and buy yet another new thing...

Several beads with keum boo. Note the uneveness of application on the spirals of the largest bead: this technique works best with subtle, shallow textures.

I'm too cheap to use real foil, so I tried tripling up leaf and patting it down, failing to follow Ms. Fago's instructions in a number of other ways, like not having a hot plate or a bamboo chopstick to test the temperature. Nevertheless I managed to get some gold on some beads, and after running them through the magnetic polisher, concluded it was even there to stay.

Obverse. PMC, 2005, largest roughly 14mm.

And, after a while, I figured out how to adapt Celie Fago's approach to my equipment—but that's for the next post:) Also: kudos to the pmc sig member who generously loaned me the book!

file created 18jan06

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.