Some Recipes for Gilding

ABSTRACT Recipes for edge gilding and gold tooling on bookbindings can be found in medieval alchemical, chemical, technical and medical manuscript tracts from the late fifteenth century onwards. Sixteenth-century printed books dealing with medicinal and “curious” subjects, with 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.