Apothecary's Bottles
The restoration of Apothecary's Bottles is generally confined to the
restoration of the gilding and painting on the inside of those.
The gold leaf is stuck to the glass with a size made from diluted jelly,
yep the edible kind, or filtered diluted hide glue (rabbit skin is best ).
This same process may be used to resize any loose but still existing gold leaf,
sometimes, some of the paint may be stuck down using the same treatment.
Making the Size
Warm a little water and sprinkle a some Jelly Crystals in to this.
Stir until all crystals are dissolved. Then just paint on to the required
place and place the gold leaf unto the wet jelly straighten any wrinkles and
apply more gold leaf over any holes.
After so treating that which may be rescued, the missing black lines are first repainted,
and left to dry.
Now the coloring and new gold leaf are applied, as required in the same order as originally
was done.
This order can be discerned by looking at which color paint or gold or silver leaf is foremost
to the glass and do that first, then the next layer and so on.
In order to facilitate seeing the effect of ones painting one or two
mirrors may be placed so that one can see the outside of the bottle and the
effects of ones painting on it, if there is a problem with seeing what one
does in reverse, than a second mirror will reverse this view to normal.
For gold or silver leaf, do use real gold or white gold leaf and not Slag metal (imitation gold leaf) as
this will turn darker within a few years.
After finishing the design, this is best coated with a thin layer of shellac,
after which the whole inside of the bottle is coated with a wash
in the same color as original.
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