Gold and Gold Sprinkling

Papers could be dyed or decorated with marbling before applying gold or as decorative elements on their own. A darker or heavily decorated paper could have a secondary plainer sheet mounted to it for the calligraphy and illumination. Also at this time many wealthy patrons collected albums of artwork and poetry which they would mount onto decorated papers. Most dyed papers I have observed were of lighter, pastel colors, however other colors are possible. One lovely manuscript page in the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a dark blue-green color.

The specific techniques for decorating marginal paper that we will explore here are:

  1. Gold Paint
  2. Gold Sprinkling
  3. Gold Sprinkling with Stencils

Gold paint
A close up of some gold paint in the margin of a Freer Sackler Gallery manuscript.

Gold Paint

While expensive to buy (both modernly and in medieval times) and labor-intensive to make, shell gold paint still has many advantages in its versatility. Simply used with a brush and water like other paints it can be applied delicately and quickly with little waste.

Some manuscripts seem to include different colors of gold paint; perhaps different alloys, used to achieve slightly different colors. Also different thicknesses in the application will create shading.

Shell gold paint can be purchased from many reputable pigment sellers including iconofile.com or sinopia.com. There are also several extant recipes for the manufacture of the paint.

Gold Sprinkling

Jonathan Bloom explains this technique well in his book; “The paper was first starched and then sprinkled with gold particles – made by grinding pure gold leaf- using either a horsehair brush or sieves of this or that degree of fineness, depending on the effect desired. Next, the paper was burnished with a hard stone to make the gold adhere and develop its metallic luster1.” This technique was probably brought to Persia through contact and trade with China2.

Burnishing is not necessary before performing this technique, but the page will need to be burnished thoroughly before calligraphy or painting. The sizing of the paper is the first step in our gold sprinkling technique. Note: applying size to a painted page is a bad idea, the paint will become wet and tend to come up off of the paper. If you want a tinted background use a dyed paper.

Gold sprinkling
An example of gold sprinkling dramatic on a dark blue-green background on a manuscript in the Metropolitan Museum of Art dated circa 1600.

Bloom mentions two period texts, one from 1184 or 1185 which states the best papers were sized with rice starch and another from a treatise on the history of the art recorded by Qadi Ahmad in his “Calligraphers and Painters” (published in 1606) that is sited as by a calligrapher Sultan-Ali Mashhadi (who died in 1520). (For more on making a paper size, including Qadi Ahmad's recipe, see the Paper and Parchment page)

I applied the size liberally with a wide brush over the entire surface of the page, then turned the page over and sized the back of the page thoroughly as well. I found that the surface tension of the wet paper on the board I set it on helped keep the paper in place and from wrinkling as it dried. Alternatively to prevent wrinkles you can use watercolorist’s tape, tacks or staples to attach your page to a backing board while it is wet and at its fullest expansion. I’m not sure what technique was used by the Safavid artists, in illuminations there appear to be lines (perhaps thread) running across the edge of pages, these may be for securing them to the board the artist is working on or just ruling guides.

The actual sprinkling technique is very simple and leaves remarkably little waste.

  1. While the page is still wet from sizing set a sheet of loose gold leaf onto a screen (You will want some sort of gilder’s tip or other flat brush to move the gold onto the screen.)
  2. Holding the screen a few inches over your page, push the gold through the screen with a stiff brush. The finer the mesh of the screen, the smaller the particles of gold will be that will fall and adhere to the page. The closer you are to the page, the less likely gold particles will fall elsewhere.
  3. Burnish. Do not burnish the page until it is mostly dry; burnishing when the paper is too wet will cause the gold to come up onto your burnisher and possibly damage the paper.

the technique
Stencils

Gold Sprinkling with Stencils

Qadi Ahmad talks about the use of stencils as an improvement over the technique of sprinkling and attributes its invention to a particular 16th century artist, though he does not go into detail about how the stencils were used. Close observation of the gold marginal decoration of some later 16th century manuscripts shows what appear to be the crisp outlines and repetition of stencils in the gold work.

My speculation is that the stencils were placed on the sized page and then gold sprinkled onto it through a very fine mesh. Stencils could be cut from paper, so long as the paper stencil is lifted away before the size dries, adhering it to the main sheet of decoration.

An extreme close up of a flower in the margin of a Freer Sackler Gallery manuscript shows the distinct outlines of what may be a stencil


Note: This article (with some slight differences) was published in Tournaments Illuminated, Winter Issue 2007

See an example of this technique on my gallery page.

1Bloom, page 72

2Amongst other sources, Bloom cites the Persian fondness for Chinese papers and several existing Persian works on Chinese papers, page 70, page 62. The Chinese technique is remarkably similar to the Persian: "The technique for applying to gold is in each case gently pushing flecks of gold leaf with a small brush through a sieve of appropriate gauge in the end of a bamboo tube onto the previously-sized paper" Whitfield, page 1190.