Gold Tooling Class Review
8-15-2006
I attended a class on Gold Tooling at the New York Center for Book Arts over the weekend with Gavin Dovey so I thought that I’d share a bit of information on what I learned.
If you haven’t tooled in gold before, the good news is that it’s surprisingly easy. The art requires practice and patience above all but you can get respectable results after a few days of practice. As with most of my hobbies, however, tooling can be highly expensive.
Gavin taught us a couple of different methods of applying gold to leather in various designs. For some designs, it was better to tool in the leather first, lay down a piece of leaf directly on the glaired leather, and then hot-stamp back into the tool mark. Sometimes, it was preferable to lay down the glaire and gold onto the untooled leather and then hot-stamp right through the gold. The third method had us putting gold onto the *tool* and then stamping into the leather. Each method has its merits and detractors.
The consumables part of this process is rather expensive at $35-50 for 25 leaves of gold. If you’re particularly saucy, you can use Palladium for $60 a book or so! A book of 25 leaves can last a good while if you’re careful. Using my all-thumbs/boneheaded procedures, I was able to ornately tool a 10×2″ spine with about six sheets of gold. Gavin, naturally, did his example using three sheets.
I’m confident that the brass and wood tools will last many lifetimes with proper care. The major drag is that there doesn’t appear to be a source of inexpensive tools. A very-versatile line tool on a 3″ brass wheel with a handle is about $150 and a single decorative hand tool can run from $75 - $150 on from Talas depending on the detail and size. Choose wisely, grasshopper. Though it could be useful once, the $90 pirate ship tool might not be the best investment.
All in all, I highly suggest that you take a class on tooling/finishing if you’re interested in the art. I learned a great deal from Gavin in the two-day workshop and though it cost me a pretty penny to attend, I’m very glad that I did!
-Jonathan
