Burnished bronze, any gilders?

Terry Hart cpf

SGF, Supreme Grumble Framer
Joined
Sep 23, 2003
Posts
2,087
Loc
Excelsior, MN
Looking for advice on recreating the burnished bronze look of many frames I see that I believe to be from the early 20th century. They appear to be water gilded or some technique allowing burnishing.Useing metal leaf always seems too "brassy" or becomes too muddy and looses its burnish with too heavy tone application and bronze powder seems too "grainy". It could'nt be that difficult(?) as I think these frames were relativly quickly done and inexpensive in their day but I seem to find it more challenging than matching water gilded karat leaf in tone.
 
Hi Terry,

You lost my email address, or what? ;)
By its nature bronze can't be easily burnished and will not stay permanently. In order to avoid bronzed surface oxidize over time you need to laquer it and then all "burnishing" becomes a mood issue.
To me, burnishing bronze is a trick rather than a responsible solution, just like turning metal leaf look like gold is. You are better off going with real gold leaf for those burnished areas. If matching is an isue there, then make sure you will have same color beneath the newly goldleafed surface. More oever, gold leaf's color is permanent and varies largely with its composition:12K is "white gold", 18K is "lemon gold" ... You need to get a gold leaf chart and this is how you know what type gold leaf you realy need (Gold leaf suppliers have it). Don't attempt to color gold. Any pigment, die, laquer will afect gold's luminosity and overall transparency. That repaired spot will show off under any angle and light you may think of.

As a matter of fact by late 19C and ealy 20C bronzed with burnished real gold accent frames were popular. Surface finish is likely to fool your eye. To see what I meant by that, take a piece of glass and smear some thined down quick oil size on it. Let it dry and then rub some fine grain bronze on it with a fine piece of cloth. What you get there is mirror "burnished" bronze, right? If you repeat same experiment with metal leaf the result will be equally shiny to the eye. The "glass" finish of your surface to be bronzed burnished is the answer. But by the time you got to get a perfectly smooth and impermeable surface you wished you were using gold leaf instead.
 
Yes, I am building an "addition" to an existing frame and matching the finish as well as possible. It may be that it is not really burnished, it sort of looks like it but not as bright as real water gilded gold. I see this sort of finish around a lot and am curious as to the method. I have a gold leaf color chart (5 varieties on hand) as well as metal leaf and bronze powder. The finish most closley resembles Antique Bronze (#26) from Gold Leaf & Metallic Powders except that it seems much finer, less grainy,more like leaf than that powder. I'm trying it in gum arabic to see if that allows for a better burnish than simply applying it to oil size. It seems that it may take several layers though.
 
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