Paper and Printing Recipes / A Handy Volume of Practical Recipes, Concerning the Every-Day Business of Stationers, Printers, Binders, and the Kindred Trades

by John Sawtelle Ford

To Gild with Gold Leaf.

Bookbinders use gold leaf in two ways—to gild on the edge, and to place gold letters on the binding. To gild on the edge, the edge is smoothly cut, put in a strong press, scraped so as to make it solid, and the well-beaten white of an egg, or albumen, put on thinly; the gold leaf is then put on before the albumen is dry; it is pressed down with cotton, and when dry polished with an agate polisher. To put on the lettering, the place where the letters are to appear is coated with albumen, and after it is dry, the type to be used is heated to about the boiling point of water, the gold leaf is put on, either on the book or on the type, and then placed on the spot where the lettering is desired, when the gold leaf will adhere by the heat of the type, while the excess of gold leaf loosely around is rubbed off with a tuft of cotton.