gold

Ingredients

clean egg white, gold, saffron, bole

Preparation Steps

Original Recipe Text

The recipe describes how to embellish the outside of books with gold ('Om boeken te lusten buten mit goude'). The binder is clean egg white, applied to the edge. The gold leaf is laid on while the egg white is still wet. It is then left to dry, burnished, and worked with a punch. For older books, a small amount of saffron and bole (clay) is recommended to be added to the egg white (p. 57).

Evidence

"The earliest European description of edge-gilding I have come across occurs in a collection of alchemical, chemical, technical and medical tracts, a late-fifteenth century manuscript in Dutch and Latin at the Wellcome Library in London (MS.517). ... We are told to take clean egg white and lay it on [the edge] and then lay on the gold while the egg white is still wet; then to leave it to dry, burnish it, and to work it with a punch."

Remarks

This is noted as the earliest European description of edge-gilding. The text emphasizes the importance of applying gold while the glair (egg white) is wet. On older substrates, additives like saffron and Armenian bole were used to enhance the color or adhesion (p. 57).