Journal of Paper Conservation

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Some Recipes for Gilding

Mirjam M. Foot

To cite this article: Mirjam M. Foot (2019) Some Recipes for Gilding, Journal of Paper
Conservation, 20:1-4, 56-60, DOI: 10.1080/18680860.2019.1748384

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JOURNAL OF PAPER CONSERVATION
2019, VOL. 20, NOS. 1-4, 56–60
https://doi.org/10.1080/18680860.2019.1748384

Some Recipes for Gilding

Mirjam M. Foot

ABSTRACT Keywords
Recipes for edge gilding and gold tooling on bookbindings can be found in medieval Gold tooling; Recipes;
alchemical, chemical, technical and medical manuscript tracts from the late fifteenth century Leather gilding; Edge gilding;
onwards. Sixteenth-century printed books dealing with medicinal and “curious” subjects, with Sixteenth century
secrets and mysteries, as well as seventeenth and eighteenth century bookbinding manuals,
include recipes for making gold leaf or gold paint and pigments and explain how to apply
these to leather and parchment bindings. This article concentrates on descriptions of edge
gilding and gold tooling in West European sources, dating from the late fifteenth to the late
seventeenth centuries.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Schlüsselwörter
Rezepte für Schnittvergoldungen und Handvergoldungen an Bucheinbänden finden sich in Handvergoldung; Rezepte;
mittelalterlichen alchemistischen, chemischen, technischen und medizinischen Handschriften Ledervergoldung;
seit dem späten 15. Jahrhundert. Auch gedruckte Werke aus dem 16. Jahrhundert, die sich Schnittvergoldung;
Sechzehntes Jahrhundert
mit medizinischen und „kuriosen“ Themen, sowie mit geheimen Dingen und Mysterien
befassen, sowie Handbücher zur Buchbinderei aus dem 17. und 18. Jahrhundert enthalten
Rezepte zur Herstellung von Blattgold oder Goldfarbe und Pigmenten und erklären, wie
diese auf Leder- und Pergamenteinbände aufzubringen sind. Dieser Artikel konzentriert sich
auf Beschreibungen von Schnitt- und Einbandvergoldungen aus westeuropäischen
Quellenschriften aus dem späten 15. bis späten 17. Jahrhundert.

References to the use of gold for ornamenting books
and bindings date back at least as far as the eleventh
century. Tamim ibn al Mu’izz ibn Bādīs, the (part)
author of an eleventh century Arabic treatise on book-
making, Staff of the Scribes and Implements of the Dis-
cerning, mentions in his chapter on bookbinding,
among the tools necessary for this craft, irons for tool-
ing, several named decorative tools, and, among tools
used to apply gold, silver, ink and paint, several pol-
ishers. He also gives preparations for brush-gold, mix-
ing powdered gold with fish glue.1 As Ibn Bādīs’
chapter on tooling was either never written or did
not survive, we do not know how the gold was applied
and whether or not gold leaf was used as well. Another
tract on bookbinding in Arabic, written by Bakr al-Ish-
bīlī, a binder who worked in Seville at the end of the
twelfth century, mentions the use of heated irons for
tooling, a cutter for gold leaf and an implement for
the application of gold, as well as a polisher used in
tooling (Szirmai, 1999: 59; Gacek, 1990–1991).2
West European documentary sources for gilding
edges and covers date mainly from the late fifteenth
century onwards, but an early twelfth century manual
on painting, glass making and metalwork by the
monk Roger von Helmarshausen (fl. c. 1100), who
wrote under the pseudonym of Theophilus, De diversis
artibus, shows how precious metals were employed to
decorate books.3 He describes how thin plates of
copper are engraved and then put on an anvil and
cut through with a chisel or a punch, hit with a ham-
mer. The edges are smoothed with a file and the plate
is gilt and polished. ‘In the same way’, Theophilus
says, ‘silver plaques and plates for book covers are
made with figures, flowers, small animals, and birds.
Parts of these are gilded, namely, the halos of the
figures, the hair, and, in places, the robes, and parts
remain silver.’ Two chapters are devoted to repoussé
work and the specific use of such plates for book covers
is mentioned in chapter 78: ‘Repoussé work that is
chased’. Theophilus describes this technique in detail
and concludes: ‘In the same way you can … make
figures in gold and silver on the books of the gospels
and on missals’.
Jewelled book covers of this kind, a number of which
have survived, were quite clearly not made by bookbin-
ders, but by metal workers. Gold was also used by bin-
ders, albeit in more modest ways, and references to its
application can be found in recipe books, descriptions
and explanations of the crafts of bookbinding and gild-
ing, and in technical binders’ manuals.
For this article I have limited myself to descriptions
of edge gilding and gold tooling in western European
sources, dating from the late fifteenth to the late seven-
teenth centuries.
Inventories and bills from the early fifteenth century
onwards mention the existence of gilt edges and gold-

CONTACT mirjam.foot@btinternet.com
© IADA / International Association of Book and Paper Conservators 2020

tooled decoration,4 but none of these tells us how the
observed results were achieved.
The earliest European description of edge-gilding I
have come across occurs in a collection of alchemical,
chemical, technical and medical tracts, a late-fifteenth
century manuscript in Dutch and Latin at the Well-
come Library in London (MS.517). On folio 219r we
read how to embellish the outside of books with gold
(‘Om boeken te lusten buten mit goude’). We are
told to take clean egg white and lay it on [the edge]
and then lay on the gold while the egg white is still
wet; then to leave it to dry, burnish it, and to work it
with a punch. On old books a little saffron and a little
bole should be added to the egg white.5
Another Dutch manuscript of c. 1500 in the British
Library, Reyner Oesterhuysen of Deventer’s Compen-
dium medicinale, is full of recipes for making colours,
including one for making gilt leather and for colouring
sheepskin gold. There are also instructions how to
work with gold leaf, but none refer specifically to book-
bindings.6 More useful is a rare small quarto, published
in Brussels by Thomas van der Noot on 7 February
1513, entitled Tbouck va[n] wondre. Two copies are
known, one in the Rosenwald Collection at the Library
of Congress in Washington, the other in the Royal
Library in Brussels. The work went into two further edi-
tions, printed in Antwerp by Hendrik Petersen van Mid-
delburgh in 1540,7 and by Jacob van Liesvelt in 1544.8
The content of these editions is the same, but the setting
varies. It was translated into English by Leonard Mascall
in 1583 (Mascall, 1583, especially fols. 42-3, 50). There
are a number of recipes for colouring leather red,
green and gold. The latter is achieved by taking
brown-red [pigment], grinding it on a stone with
water mixed with chalk and lime water, covering the
skins twice with this mixture, and then laying on silver
(Mascall adds ‘or golde’), letting it dry and smoothing
it (according to Mascall ‘with a tooth’), covering it
again [with the paint, chalk and lime-water mixture]
and letting it dry in the sun. A better method is
described two chapters further on: To gild leather you
must cover it two or three times9 with egg white and
gum water, then lay on your gold and smooth it well.
Or [you can use] yolks of hard-roasted eggs mixed
with gum water (‘and ground’ according to Mascall).
This is followed immediately by instructions how to var-
nish red and green skins. Mascall gives a second recipe
how ‘To gilde on Leather’ (Mascall, 1583, fol. 50):
‘First ye must worke it well, and over strike it with the
whytes of egges, and gum water beaten together, then
lay your gold thereon, and strike it well, ye maye temper
therewith hard yeolks of egges beaten with gum water.’
The use of eggs, more often just the raw whites by
themselves or mixed with water, was well known as
an adhesive and recipes for making glair, also used
by painters, limners and scribes, can be found in several
tracts or recipe books.10
JOURNAL OF PAPER CONSERVATION 57
Alexis of Piedmont, a pseudonym for Girolamo
Ruscelli, used in his De’ secreti, Venice, 1557, egg
white or gum to gild on parchment or leather, applying
silver or tin leaf, covering this with a saffron-containing
varnish ‘and you shall see immediately a coloure of
golde very fayre’, and drying it in the sun.11 Burnished
gold was laid onto a mixture of gypsum, Armenian
bole, aloe epaticum,12 sugar candy, and a little honey,
or, instead of the last two ingredients, the white of
newly laid eggs, strained through a linen cloth. Master
Alexis also gives a detailed recipe for gilding the edges
of books (fol. 96r). Armenian bole is pulverised
together with about half the quantity of sugar and a lit-
tle well-beaten egg white.
This doen, take the booke that you will gylte, whiche
muste be wel bound, well glewed, even cutte, and
well polished, set him fast in the presse, and that as
even and as righte as you can possible. Then with a
pensill [brush] geve him a wype over with the white
of an Egge well beaten, and let it drye, then geve
him also another with the sayd composition [the
bole mixture]. And whan it is well dryed, scrape it,
and pollish it wel. Last of all when you will laye on
the Golde, wette the sayde edges with a little cleare
water, with a pensill, and than incontinent [straight
away] put on the golde leaves, cutte in that biggenesse
they ought to be, and whan it is drye, pollyshe it with a
dogges tothe [tooth]. This doen, you maye make what
worke you will upon it’13 –another reference to
gauffering or possibly even to painting.
One of Master Alexis’s secrets deals with the keeping of
egg white ‘without corruptinge, and without putting
Arsenick to it’, by leaving it un-stirred (unbroken),
adding white vinegar, and after two days straining it
through a cloth, a process that is repeated after eight
days, before it is bottled.14
A. Helmreich’s Ein gründlichs … Kunstbüchlein,
Eisleben, 1563 (D4r) recommends a different ground
for edge gilding. Lead-white, saffron and garlic juice,
mixed with egg white and a little size, are rubbed on
to the edges, while the book is in a press. When the
edge is almost dry, what he calls ‘painter’s gold’ is
laid on and, when that had dried completely, it is burn-
ished with a tooth. In his Schoon Tractaat, Reess, 1581
(fols. 23v-24r) Simon Andriessen has a recipe ‘Om
Boecken buyten te vergulden’, to gild the outside of
books. He too means the cut edges of the bound and
covered book, which is put in a press, with thin boards
inserted between the textblock and the boards, to keep
the leather clean. After smoothing the edges with a
tooth, he paints them with a mixture of ochre, pow-
dered with water, orpiment15 and beaten egg white,
cuts the gold leaf to the right width and length to
cover the edge, and lays it on a piece of paper ready
for use, but first the orpiment mixture is stirred and
used again, this time a little thinner, and while it is
still wet, the gold is gently put on and rubbed with cot-
ton wool. Then a smooth piece of paper is put on the
58 M. M. FOOT
gold to protect it. When it is quite dry the paper is
taken off and the edge burnished. Anshelmus Faust
gilds the edges before the book has been bound and
covered, and recommends burnishing the gilt edge
over thin paper. His detailed manual, originally written
in German, was translated in Flemish and French as
Beschrijvinghe Ende onderwijsinghe ter discreter en ver-
maerd[er] consten des boeckbinders handwerck … [and]
Prescription. Et enseignement de la discrete et fameuse
science de la manifacture des relieurs de livres … , so
that the monks of the monastery of St Bernard near
Antwerp could read it and learn from it. Faust gave
them his manuscript in 1612 as a new year’s present,
because of their great love and affection for the binder’s
craft. It is the earliest detailed account of how books
were bound and decorated. Both edge gilding and tool-
ing with gold leaf are discussed.16 The edges are cut and
the spine is flattened to provide an even and straight
surface for the fore-edge, and the book is put in a
press. The edges are evened with a sharp knife and
burnished. Good red bole is shaven finely over the
edges and five or six drops of clean water are sprinkled
on and rubbed in with the finger tips. This is left for the
duration of one ‘paternoster’, surely a familiar way of
measuring time for the monks, after which the edge
is rubbed with soft paper strips and burnished again.
Then the edge is painted with egg white and, while
this is very wet, the gold is laid on and gently rubbed
down with soft cotton. The whole surface must be cov-
ered and if there are gaps, more gold leaf needs to be
put on. Faust warns against spilling egg white on the
gold as this will cause darkening. The edge is then
left to dry, but not too close to the fire or in the sun,
as that will make the gold flake off. Before the edge is
burnished, a thin piece of paper is put on to it and
the gilt edge is rubbed until it looks good. He warns
not to hammer the punch in too deeply if the edges
are being gauffered.
Faust describes tooling in gold in several different
ways. Parchment (or vellum) is tooled off the book.
The parchment is measured for size on the book and
holes are made near the endbands and at the position
of the sewing supports for later lacing on. The parch-
ment is then put on a piece of pasteboard and rubbed
with egg white, not too thickly and only where the gold
is going to be. Do not let the egg white get too dry, he
admonishes, and do not lay on the gold too wet. But if
you touch the ground with your knuckle and if it no
longer sticks then it is right. Lay on the gold and roll
it as you like, but do not make your roll too hot. If
the ground has become too dry, you can breathe on
it. The dryer the ground the hotter your roll needs to
be and the damper the ground, the cooler your tools
or your roll. Parchment can also be gilt wet; the egg
white is mixed with a little water and the parchment
is painted with this mixture; immediately the gold
leaf, cut to the exact size of the roll or tool, is laid on.
Care needs to be taken that the gold leaf does not crease
and that the gold is dry before it is tooled. Leather can
also be tooled in gold either wet or dry, but this is done
on the bound book.
If you want to gild dry, the leather is first rubbed
with a clean woollen cloth, put into the press and the
spine is covered thinly with egg white, using a soft
sponge. This is left to dry. The gold is picked up on
the tool, which must not be too hot, and pressed on
to the dried egg white. The surplus is wiped off with
a hare’s paw. When gilding the covers, the gold leaf
is laid onto the dried egg white and then impressed
with the tool or roll, again not too hot. When gilding
wet, the egg white is beaten well with water until it
foams and the leather is painted with this mixture. A
piece of wood is rubbed through the binder’s hair (to
make it greasy) and used to pick up the gold leaf and
to lay it on to the wet ground, taking care that the
egg white and water mixture does not protrude beyond
the gold and that the gold leaf does not crease. Once the
gold is dry, the tools are applied. After that the surface
is gently wiped with a damp linen cloth, then with pure
egg white, and when that is dry the covers can be
polished. Pigskin cannot be tooled in gold, according
to Faust, except right in the centre of the cover with
an oval and you will need strong egg white and use
the oval quite cool.
Dirk de Bray’s Onderwijs van’t Boek-Binden was
written in 1568, while he was apprenticed to Passchier
van Wesbusch, a binder in Haarlem (North Holland).17
Although he discusses tooling with a creaser and sev-
eral kinds of roll, working from the outside of the cov-
ers inwards, there is no mention of gold. Leather can be
coloured red or black and the edges are sprinkled and
burnished, but the application of gold leaf had to wait
until nine years later Ambrosius Vermerck added a
chapter on edge gilding. After the edges have been
cut and the spine depressed with the help of two nee-
dles in order to keep the fore-edge flat, the book is
put between two boards in a press and any remaining
unevenness is scraped off with a knife. The edge (first
the fore-edge, then the head and tail edges) is rubbed
three or four times with a piece of red chalk, a little
spittle is added and dispersed with paper strips until
the edge is dry. It is then burnished. Next the edge is
covered thinly and evenly with beaten egg white
applied with a sponge, and before it has had time to
dry the gold leaf is put on the edge and pressed down
with a clean piece of soft wool. When the egg white
is partially dry a thin warm piece of paper is put on
the gold and rubbed softly with a dog’s tooth, so that
the gold adheres everywhere. When it is completely
dry the edge is burnished again over the paper. Then
the superfluous gold is wiped off with a piece of wool
that has been rubbed through the binder’s hair to
make it slightly greasy, and the edge is finally burnished
directly on the gold until it shines. If desired, tools and

a roll can be impressed on to the gilt edge, which is
burnished again, and several flowers and leaves that
have been tooled (gauffered) can be made matt and
the book may be further decorated as desired.
Decorating gilt edges with punches or finishing
tools, adding paint for greater effect, is mentioned in
several binders’ manuals, but nowhere so lavishly illus-
trated as in M. Vogt, Invention Newer Contrafactur-
ischer Vorstellung Allerhand Bücher auffm Schnit
Zierlichen zu stempffen, Ulm, 1644, where, after a
brief introduction, a set of engravings displays a wide
selection of gauffered and painted edges decorated
with birds, flowers, branches, pomegranates, flaming
stars, wavy patterns and little hearts, as well as the
Sacred monogram and the names of Jesus and Maria.
The patterns are meant as examples for other binders
to follow, but there is no indication how Vogt applied
the gold and the tools, or what kind of ground he used.
The last seventeenth-century tract in which edge
gilding is described is Poligraphice by W.S. [William
Salmon], printed in London in 1672. Gilding parch-
ment, book covers and leather is also mentioned and
gold or silver is laid with a feather on a complex-sound-
ing ‘size for burnished gold’, consisting of bole armo-
niack [Armenian bole] and fine chalk ground with
water, mixed with glair. Gum hedera18 and saffron
are also ground, mixed and left to rot in horse dung
for six weeks. The recipe for edge gilding: ‘To Gild
Books’, sounds more familiar.
Take Bole Armoniack four peny-weight, Sugar-candy
one peny-weight, mix and grind them with Glair of
Eggs; then on a bound Book, (while in the press,
after it hath been smeared with glair of Eggs and is
dried) smear the said composition, let it dry, then
rub it well and polish it: then with fair water wet the
edges of the Book, and suddenly lay on the gold, press-
ing it down with Cotton gently, this done let it dry,
and then polish it exactly with a tooth.
Once we reach the eighteenth century, the more
numerous German and French bookbinders’ manuals
that describe edge gilding and gold tooling also tend
to give recipes, especially for preparing the edges. For
gold tooling ‘glair’ or egg white is specified, sometimes
olive- walnut- or almond oil, or bacon rind, are used to
grease the glaired leather slightly before the gold leaf is
laid on. Some manuals distinguish between gilding
with oil, when the glaired areas are rubbed with a little
oil before the gold leaf is laid on, and gilding with
water, when water mixed with a few drops of egg
white is used. Opinions differ whether fresh or old
egg white is preferable.
For edge gilding, beaten egg white is again widely
used, sometimes over colourful mixtures. We meet
Armenian bole, red chalk, umber or saffron (yellow
ochre or sap- green are also used to give a better col-
our), sugar and even blood. When the edges of old
books are gilt, they are first wiped over with a cut
JOURNAL OF PAPER CONSERVATION 59
onion, or, failing that, a few drops of spirit of vitriol
in water, to degrease the surface. Many recipes appear
to have been copied from earlier ones, or possibly, rely
on established practice. The experimental days are past,
but, as the anonymous commentator on Zeidler’s
Buchbinder-Philosophie remarks: edge gilding remains
‘a tedious and difficult job and binders would rather
be excused’.19
A note on substances
Aloe hepatica: a kind of aloe (a genus of plants), the
leaves of which exude latex, a viscid liquid containing
rubbery substances; ‘aloe’ was also used for a fragrant
resin (now obs.); see also: hepatic aloes.
Bole: the name of several kinds of fine, compact,
earthy or unctuous clay, usually coloured yellow, red
or brown by the presence of iron oxide.
Specifically: Armenian bole (bole armeniac, armo-
niack, armenicke, etc): an astringent earth brought
from Armenia.
Gum: a viscid secretion of many trees and shrubs,
soluble in water; hence: gum-water.
Also: gum Arabic: a white gum or resin exuded by
certain species of Acacia;
gum hedera: a brown-red latex from the ivy plant;
gum tragacanth: a white gum from several species of
Astragalus (a leguminous plant or shrub).
Gypsum (gipsum): hydrous calcium sulphate.
Hepatic aloes: a dark-brownish-red fragrant resin.
Lead-white: a compound of lead carbonate and hy-
drated oxide of lead, used as a white pigment.
Lime water: alkaline earth (calcium oxide) dissolved
in water.
Ochre (ocher): a pale-brownish yellow pigment; a
native earth (or class of earths), consisting of a mixture
of hydrated oxide of iron with varying proportions of
clay.
Orpiment (yellow arsenic; King’s yellow): a bright
yellow mineral substance; trisulphide of arsenic.
Saffron: organic yellow pigment obtained from the
stamina of flowers, such as the Crocus sativus.
Sap-green: a green pigment prepared from buck-
thorn berries.
Spirit of vitriol: [sulphuric acid] a distilled essence of
vitriol, a native or artificial sulphate of metal (especially
sulphate of iron).
Umber: a brown-yellow pigment obtained from
earth composed of a mixture of ferrous oxide, manga-
nese dioxide and clay.
Author
Mirjam Foot, D.Litt, FSA, former Director of Collections
and Preservation at the British Library, is Emeritus Professor
of Library and Archive Studies at University College,
London, where she taught Historical Bibliography,
60 M. M. FOOT
Preservation as part of the Collection Management course,
and Advanced Preservation. She has published extensively
(books and articles) on the history of bookbinding, the his-
tory of decorated paper and on a number of preservation
topics. She gives regular papers at conferences all over
Europe and in the USA.
Notes
1. See Bosh (1961), Levey (1962), and Petherbridge et al.
(1981: 44, 74).
2. This bookbinding manual has not been translated in a
western language and it is unclear how the gold was
applied.
3. References are to the English translation (Teofilo
Lombardo et al., 1979) Book III, chapters 72, 74 and
78. Theophilus also gives a recipe for ‘Milling gold
for Books’ (chapter 28) and discusses the use of gold
and silver (over glair) in books (chapter 29), but in
both cases the application is for painted letters or
manuscript illumination.
4. See for example Gay (1887: 515); Thomas (1939: xviii,
xix, xxvii); De Marinis (1960: 4–5); Laffitte (1989);
Szirmai (1999: 202). John Dorne’s Day Book, of 1520
mentions two books as ‘deauratum’, possibly denoting
gilt edges (Madan, 1885).
5. My translation. Bole (also ‘bole Armenicke’ or ‘Arme-
nian bole’): an astringent earth from Armenia, fine,
compact, earthy or unctuous clay, usually coloured yel-
low, red or brown. Guineau (2005) is a good, very
detailed, reference work on colours and substances.
6. British Library, MS Sloane 345, fols. 23–34, especially
fol. 26.
7. A copy is in the Royal Library in Brussels.
8. Two copies are known: in the Royal Library, The Hague
and among the books in Peterborough Cathedral
Library, now in the University Library, Cambridge.
9. The 1513 ed. has two or three times; the 1540 and 1544
editions say three times, while Mascall’s translation,
where the recipe is headed ‘To gylde on Leather’,
also recommends ‘thrise’(Mascall, 1583, fol. 43).
10. See Gullick (1979) and several of the works mentioned
below.
11. This work was translated into French, Dutch and, a
year after its first publication, in English by William
Warde as The Secretes of the reverende maister Alexis
of Piedmovnt (Warde, 1558); quotations are from
this translation; see book 5, fol. 92r; the pollen of lilies
can be used instead of saffron.
12. ‘Aloehepaticke’ or ‘Aloe Epaticum’: hepatic aloes: a
dark-brownish-red fragrant resin, fol. 94r.
13. Fol. 96r.
14. Fol. 96r. The same recipe is given in Gullick (1979).
15. King’s yellow or yellow arsenic; trisulphide of arsenic.
16. For edge gilding see fols. 38r-40r; for gold-tooling on
parchment see fols. 11r-12r and for gold-tooling on
leather see fols. 40r-43r.
17. Facsimile K. van der Horst and C. de Wolf eds. (Bray,
1977). Tooling is described on fol. 33; rolls are illus-
trated on fol. 46; the chapter on edge gilding by Ver-
merck is on fols. 47-48.
18. A brown-red resin (latex) from the ivy plant; see
p. 144; the recipe for gilding books is on pp. 275-6.
19. N.N., Sonderbare Historische und Politische Anmerck-
ungen … über die Buchbinder-Philosophie, which
follows J.G. Zeidler, Buchbinder-Philosophie
(Zeidler, 1708) without a separate title-page, but
with new pagination, p. 16.
References
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the Discerning: An Excerpt. Ars Orientalis, 4:1–13.
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Guineau, B. 2005. Glossaire des matériaux de la couleur et des
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anciennes. Turnhout: Brepols.
Gullick, M., ed. 1979. The Arte of Limming: A Reproduction
of the 1573 Edition Newly Imprinted. 1st ed. reprinted with
an introd. by Michael Gullick. London: Scolar Pr. for the
Society of Scribes and Illuminators.
Laffitte, M.-P. 1989. Le vocabulaire médiéval de la reliure
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