Decorative Gilding: A Practical Guide

With her clear, easy-to-follow style and step-by-step instructional photos, Annie Sloan shows how you can master the art of gilding and bring brightness, sparkle, and light to any room in your home. In Annie Sloan Decorative Gilding, you'll learn how to revamp old furniture, add an elegant touch to plain modern pieces, and change the look of an entire wall - even if you have no previous gilding experience.
In the first part of the book, "Using Metal Leaf," Annie Sloan demonstrates how to apply loose and transfer metal leaf to flat and raised surfaces, and then takes you through a wide range of decorative effects, including hand painting onto metal leaf, creating paint effects on leaf, distressing it with steelwool, and using spirit dyes and chemicals to make patterns in the leaf.
In the next section, "Using Bronze Powders," the author shows how bronze powders - traditionally dusted onto gold size to create a shiny, metallic effect - can be used with stencils or wax, or added to varnish to make an inexpensive, fun paint.
For each of the techniques featured in this book you'll find a list of necessary tools and materials, clear-step-by-step instructions, practical tips on what to do if things go wrong, and countless ideas on how to apply your new-found gilding skills to embellish objects and surfaces throughout your home.

To the many books on decorative paint finishes and effects now available, Decorator Sloan (Color in Decoration, LJ 9/1/91) adds these two well-illustrated and straightforward guides. Gilding includes instructions for applying metal leaf and using bronze powders, while Paint Effects covers sponging, marbling, rag rolling, and the like. Each book begins with a photographic overview of the techniques and continues with directions. Captioned photographs illustrate the basic technique and variations, and a "Pitfalls" section shows common mistakes and how to avoid them. Covering some of the same techniques found in Jocasta Innes'a New Paint Magic (Pantheon, 1992) and Simon Cavelle's Encyclopedia of Decorative Paint Techniques (Running Pr., 1994), these guides are especially accessible to amateurs because of the color photographs and concise, clear directions. A worthwhile addition to any public library.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.