The plate

The base is composed of glue base weaker by adding water and bowl of Armenia, clay (kaolin) which, when wet the heat generating reactive power and glue used to fix the collage of gold leaf on the support, laid in three layers, it also allows burnishing gold leaf.

There are various colors : black, blue, green, yellow, and red.

Although often yellow in Italian gilding, he did also use trim black. The latter is, however, widely used in England and Germany.

In France, the plate was to warm reddish gold : Darker in the 18th century, the nineteenth clearer even up pink. Regarding the use of black trim, it occurs mainly in the nineteenth mixed with gilding. Composed of copper matte and burnished gold for the black plate tends to darken the appearance of gold, the difference in color between the two metals is decreasing. It is also used in the gilding so-called "economic", white gold receiving a yellow varnish creating the illusion.

The plate is an ocher clay, said Armenian bole, which came from quarries located in Burgundy, the Loire Valley and Meudon. It is appropriate to find the color of the old base when it comes to restoration, in order to regain the same hue we mix different colors of plates.