Gilding in the context of "Ancient furniture"

Gold leaf is gold that has been hammered into thin sheets (usually around 0.1 μm thick) by a process known as goldbeating, for use in gilding.

Gold leaf is a type of metal leaf, but the term is rarely used when referring to gold leaf. The term metal leaf is normally used for thin sheets of metal of any color that do not contain any real gold. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades. The most commonly used gold is 23-karat gold.

A pair of decorated ceilings in the main Central Hall (officially Hintze Hall since 2014) and smaller North Hall of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, were unveiled at the building's opening in 1881. They were designed by the museum's architect Alfred Waterhouse and painted by the artist Charles James Lea. The ceiling of the Central Hall consists of 162 panels, 108 of which depict plants considered significant to the history of the museum, to the British Empire or the museum's visitors and the remainder are highly stylised decorative botanical paintings. The ceiling of the smaller North Hall consists of 36 panels, 18 of which depict plants growing in the British Isles. Painted directly onto the plaster of the ceilings, they also make use of gilding for visual effect.

The natural history collections had originally shared a building with their parent institution the British Museum, but with the expansion of the British Empire there was a significant increase in both public and commercial interest in natural history, and in the number of specimens added to the museum's natural history collections. In 1860 it was agreed that a separate museum of natural history would be created in a large building, capable of displaying the largest specimens, such as whales. The superintendent of the natural history departments, Richard Owen, envisaged that visitors would enter a large central hall containing what he termed an "index collection" of representative exhibits, from which other galleries would radiate, and a smaller hall to the north would display the natural history of the British Isles. Waterhouse's Romanesque design for the museum included decorative painted ceilings. Acton Smee Ayrton, the First Commissioner of Works, refused to permit the decoration of the ceilings on grounds of cost, but Waterhouse convinced him that provided the painting took place while the scaffolding from the museum's construction was still in place it would incur no extra cost; he further managed to convince Ayrton that the ceiling would be more appealing if elements of the paintings were gilded.

Baroque architecture is a highly decorative and theatrical style which appeared in Italy in the late 16th century and gradually spread across Europe. It was originally introduced by the Catholic Church, particularly the Jesuits, as a means to combat the Reformation and the Protestant church with a new architecture that inspired astonishment, reverence and awe. It reached its peak in the High Baroque (1625–1675), when it was used in churches and palaces in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Bavaria and Austria. In the Late Baroque period (1675–1750), it reached as far as Russia, the Ottoman Empire and the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America. In about 1730, an even more elaborately decorative variant called Rococo appeared and flourished in Central Europe.

Baroque architects took the basic elements of Renaissance architecture, including domes and colonnades, and made them higher, grander, more decorated, and more dramatic. The interior effects were often achieved with the use of quadratura (i.e. trompe-l'œil painting combined with sculpture): the eye is drawn upward, giving the illusion that one is looking into the heavens. Clusters of sculpted angels and painted figures crowd the ceiling. Light was also used for dramatic effect; it streamed down from cupolas, and was reflected from an abundance of gilding. Twisted columns were also often used, to give an illusion of upwards motion, and cartouches and other decorative elements occupied every available space. In Baroque palaces, grand stairways became a central element.

Bronze is the most popular metal for cast metal sculptures; a cast bronze sculpture is often called simply "a bronze". It can be used for statues, singly or in groups, reliefs, and small statuettes and figurines, as well as bronze elements to be fitted to other objects such as furniture. It is often gilded to give gilt-bronze or ormolu.

Common bronze alloys have the unusual and desirable property of expanding slightly just before they set, thus filling the finest details of a mould. Then, as the bronze cools, it shrinks a little, making it easier to separate from the mould. Their strength and ductility (lack of brittleness) is an advantage when figures in action poses are to be created, especially when compared to various ceramic or stone materials (such as marble sculpture). These qualities allow the creation of extended figures, as in Jeté, or figures that have small cross sections in their support, such as the equestrian statue of Richard the Lionheart.

Gold ground (both a noun and adjective) or gold-ground (adjective) is a term in art history for a style of images with all or most of the background in a solid gold colour. Historically, real gold leaf has normally been used, giving a luxurious appearance. The style has been used in several periods and places, but is especially associated with Byzantine and medieval art in mosaic, illuminated manuscripts and panel paintings, where it was for many centuries the dominant style for some types of images, such as icons. For three-dimensional objects, the term is gilded or gold-plated.

Gold in mosaic began in Roman mosaics around the 1st century AD, and originally was used for details and had no particular religious connotation, but in Early Christian art it came to be regarded as very suitable for representing Christian religious figures, highlighting them against a plain but glistering background that might be read as representing heaven, or a less specific spiritual plane. Full-length figures often stand on more naturalistically coloured ground, with the sky in gold, but some are shown fully surrounded by gold. The style could not be used in fresco, but was adapted very successfully for miniatures in manuscripts and the increasingly important portable icons on wood. In all of these the style required a good deal of extra skilled work, but because of the extreme thinness of the gold leaf used, the cost of the gold bullion used was relatively low; lapis lazuli blue seems to have been at least as expensive to use.

Bone china is a type of vitreous, translucent pottery, the raw materials for which include bone ash, feldspathic material and kaolin. It has been defined as "ware with a translucent body" containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from calcined animal bone or calcium phosphate. Bone china is amongst the strongest of whiteware ceramics, and is known for its high levels of whiteness and translucency. Its high strength allows it to be produced in thinner cross-sections than other types of whiteware. Like stoneware, it is vitrified, but is translucent due to differing mineral properties.

In the mid-18th century, English potters had not succeeded in making hard-paste porcelain (as made in East Asia and Meissen porcelain), but found bone ash a useful addition to their soft-paste porcelain mixtures. This became standard at the Bow porcelain factory in London (operating from around 1747), and spread to some other English factories. The modern product was developed by the Staffordshire potter Josiah Spode in the early 1790s. Spode included kaolin, so his formula, sometimes called "Staffordshire bone-porcelain", was effectively hard-paste, but stronger, and versions were adopted by all the major English factories by around 1815.

Sizing or size is a substance that is applied to, or incorporated into, other materials—especially papers and textiles—to act as a protective filler or glaze. Sizing is used in papermaking and textile manufacturing to change the absorption and wear characteristics of those materials.

Sizing is used for oil-based surface preparation for gilding (sometimes called mordant in this context). It is used by painters and artists to prepare paper and textile surfaces for some art techniques. Sizing is used in photography to increase the sharpness of a print, to change the glossiness of a print, or for other purposes depending on the type of paper and printing technique.

A metal leaf, also called composition leaf or schlagmetal, is a thin foil used for gilding and other forms of decoration. Metal leaves can come in many different shades, due to the composition of the metal within the metal leaf. Examples of this variation of shades in metal leaves can be found in Ancient Egyptian gold leaves, as the silver content within the gold leaves could make them appear bright yellow or paler shades of yellow. Some metal leaves may look like gold leaf but do not contain any real gold. This type of metal leaf is often referred to as imitation leaf.

Metal leaves are usually made of gold (including many alloys), silver, copper, aluminium, brass (sometimes called "Dutch metal" typically 85% copper and 15% zinc) or palladium, as well as platinum.

Rococo architecture, prevalent during the reign of Louis XV in France from 1715 to 1774, is an exceptionally ornamental and exuberant architectural style characterized by the use of rocaille motifs such as shells, curves, mascarons, arabesques, and other classical elements. The Rococo style abandoned the symmetry of earlier Baroque styles like façades, cornices, and pediments, and instead created a flexible and visually engaging style that maintained a level of classical regularity. Light pastel colors, including shades of blue, green, and pink, replaced the darker elements characteristic of Baroque architecture such as exposed limestone and extensive gilding.

The iconography of Rococo architecture, predominantly associated with 18-century Europe, had a considerable influence on various architectural styles globally over subsequent centuries. These styles include Dutch colonial, French colonial, Neoclassical, Greek Revival, Belle Époque, Second Empire, Victorian, Art Deco, and Art Nouveau.