⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 2–3 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Please allow 2–3 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

Gold leaf forgives nothing and rewards everything — and The Art and Science of Gilding by Ford and Mimmack, 1909, is one of the clearest vintage manuals ever written on the gilder's art. Both the art and the science are in the title on purpose: the book teaches the hand skills of leaf laying and burnishing, and it explains the chemistry and craft knowledge underneath — the gilder's materials, the sizes and grounds, and why each one behaves the way it does.

The coverage runs the full trade: oil gilding for signs and outdoor work, water gilding with gesso grounds for mirror-bright burnished finishes, gilding on glass for the reverse-glass letters the sign painters lived by, frame gilding, silver leaf and Dutch metal, and the repair and re-gilding of old work. Tools, books of leaf, the gilder's tip and cushion, and the handling of leaf in every weather are all covered from real shop practice.

For the working gilder this is a reference worth shelving beside the modern texts, because the 1909 methods are the methods the old work was made with — the very techniques a restorer must understand to repair a water-gilt frame or re-leaf a faded gold-glass letter. For sign painters it is the deep background behind every gold-leaf window letter and outdoor sign they paint.

A gold leaf gilding manual with genuine Edwardian authority, written by tradesmen who gilded for a living. For gilders, sign painters, frame restorers, and anyone serious about working with real gold leaf.

Details: 6×9" paperback, black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1909 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1909 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1909 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.