CERTAIN PLACES.
When you have cleaned up the parts where the gold is not to stick,
you take some flour dust, such as you may gather on the walls and
cornices of mills, & we in Florence call _fuscello_, and you mix it
with water to the consistency of a paste, and with a (camel’s) hair
brush lay it thick on the parts not to be gilded, after which you dry
it well before a slow fire, and can gild safely.
Another way, too, may be employed where the flour dust is not used.
You take gesso in the cake,[190] such as the shoemakers use, pound it
up well, and make a paste of it either with stag glue,[191] or better
with fish glue,[192] but mind that either glue be well mixed with
water, so that it does not get too stiff. And inasmuch as I want to
omit nothing, I bid you note that this gesso is best employed when
you merely want to gild and leave the silver white, whereas the flour
dust method is best used when you want in addition to colour the
gold as above described. This is as much as you need know about such
matters.
Now though, of a truth, the prime merit of every craft is your being
well able to practise it yourself, yet none the less it were better
to leave these processes of gilding to those who are specialists,
for it is as I said very unhealthy[193] to practise. Know _how_ it’s
done, that’s all.
FOOTNOTES:
[190] _Gesso in pane._
[191] _Colla cervona._ _Probably a glue made of stags’ skins or
chippings. In ‘Cennino Cennini’ is a footnote on glues, quoting from
‘Dioscorides’ a glue, colla taurina, hence possibly_ ‘_cervona_’
_from_ ‘_cervo_.’
[192] _Colla di pesce._
[193] _Perniziossima._