Preparation of Gold

A china dish also serves for the preparation of gold, which needs two grams of acacia to every ten sheets of gold. The proportion of acacia is strictly controlled in large excess of acacia the gold can be easily rubbed off the box and lacquer article, while in deficiency of acacia the gold will be too dull.

The acacia is put on the dish and a little water added. The artist takes a 12x7 sheet of 24K gold, a sheet so light that the slightest breeze can lift it and make it stick somewhere, and breaks it up with his fingers in vertical movements. The other nine sheets are added one by one, and for one and half-hours the artist moves his finger left and right in the dish, adding drops of water. Then another two grams of acacia are added, together with a third of a glass of water. This is put aside for twenty minutes, allowing the gold to sink and the mixture to be skimmed. The dish is then dried above a lamp, taking care not to let in any impurities, and is ready for painting.

Aluminum

Aluminum is used rather than silver because the latter goes yellow at high temperatures. This, however, comes as a coarse powder, which has to be ground with glass, as does bronze when it is used.

Stages ofPpainting

Painting is done in seven stages based closely on the procedures for icon painting. Paint is applied at the third stage, with finer and finer details being added until the details on the naked parts of the body - such as the fingernails - are added at the seventh. Gold is used only at this final stage. In the classic method the artists make their own squirrel-hair brushes, the finer work is done under a magnifying glass, with the very finest work being achieved with single hair. Gold leaf is traditionally burnished with a wolf's tooth.

Polishing and Drying

When the gold-work is finished the box goes to a craftsman-polisher. He puts the layer of clear white lacquer and then dries the box in an oven at 80 degrees Centigrade for 24 hours. Then removes bubbles and other inclusions with a piece of glass and repeats all this procedure for seven times.

After that he takes the box with seven layer of lacquer and polishes it using a special mechanical polishing device with a big spinning circle, covered with smooth fabric - mainly flannel. He uses the solution of chromic oxide in water for this process.

“Tender Mother Care”

The final polishing is made exclusively by hand to give the lacquer surface the warmth of human touch and in order to polish small areas, which are impossible to polish by mechanical devices. This final process is called "tender-mother care".

Beware of Fakes!

Fakes - are for the sure the biggest and most serious problem of nowadays on the market of Russian lacquered boxes. For those who see it for the first time it is not easy at all to distinguish a genuine Palekh work from a fake. It needs a trained eye. Surely not everybody has one. Collectors, especially from the West, all too often go by the inscription (or signature) and the trademark. The trouble is that it is not very difficult for a painter to apply gold with only a basic education to forge both signature and trademark. As a piece of advice for beginners, a genuine Palekh piece must have at least two distinctive features. First are the gold touchup lines (probeli), emphasizing the volume of the objects in the painting. A painter must have high skill touchup lines properly; not all Palekh painters can do it. On a fake painting the gold lines are located randomly. Some imposters try to ornate the painting with lines bearing no construction sense, with the result that the ornament looks quite incongruous. Another thing, which may give an imposter away, is his inability to use the technique of multi-layer brushwork (plavi). The technique is needed so sophisticated that painters who graduated from the Palekh art school take many years to master it. Unfortunately, an innocent buyer may not see the difference between real multi-layer brushwork and primitive coloring.

There are many sophisticated attributes to authentic lacquer boxes. There is a special technique in painting the naked body (legs, arms, faces) proportions of figures, rules of painting hills, trees, and other floral objects, just to name a few.

Every expert knows each painter in Palekh and knows the unrepeatable style of all their works. After having some experience of collecting authentic lacquers, you will aquire a sharp eye for its beauty.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 693