Angel Gilding – By Seraina

Seraina’s Angel Gilded Door Panel Signage: Floor Seasons, Kings Road, Chelsea, 2024.

Angel Gilding: Earliest History

Justus von Liebig, widely credited with inventing the modern process for silvering glass, also worked on gilding glass with gold chloride. James Pratt, a British glass worker, was the first to realize that he could make affordable gold mirrors by depositing a layer of silver on top of thereby ‘backing up’ the richness of the gold. He was granted a British patent in 1885.

Gold mirrors and gold mirrored signs were very popular in English public houses (pubs) in the late Victorian era and many wonderful examples of the art can be found all over Britain today. Felix Andres, a sign painter in San Francisco, introduced a process for spray gilding glass in 1923, but the fashion for elaborate detail in signs was changing to the modern neon style and his business was not successful.

Stained glass heritage gilding of Chicago

Angel gilding was widely used by Chicago’s stained glass studios in the 1920s and 30s to make a distinctive style of stained glass for Chicago’s historic bungalows. These windows have a clear glass background with the designs picked out in opalescent glass and double-sided gold mirror. To make the double-sided gold mirror the studios angel gilded large sheets of thin (1.6 mm, or 0.06 inch) glass.

A glass worker would cut two ‘copies’ of the desired shape from the glass and place the pieces back to back in a single came. Because the pieces are gold on both sides, they catch and reflect the light whether the window is viewed from inside the house or from the street. 

Frank Lloyd Wright used double-sided angel gilded glass in many of his windows, including the now demolished Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

Gilding in London Today

Today angel gilding is used to gild inside blown glass sculptures, repair Chicago’s stained glass bungalow windows, create new glass signs and replicate and repair Victorian glass signs. At NGS we have revived the use of Angel Gilding on a number of prestige projects across London.

Real Angel Gilding – Seraina’s Angel Gilding

Until very recently the earlier art of Angel Gilding had been feared lost without trace and technical process notes or transcripts. Angel gilding was a secretive practice, originally it’s practitioners claimed to apply gold without need of water glaze or chemical process. Today several versions of the process have been accepted as the original version itself. We tend to embrace the recent theories and ideas made popular by for example Sarah King, a new young master of the Chicago techniques.

But what we found recently to make us so excited?

We’ve found a technique that for us is a fabulous new gilding process that goes beyond water gilding in terms of affordability costs and final light glittering beauty. We call it ‘Satine Angel gilding’ as it ticks all the boxes.

Buy what about the dreaded ‘Tinted’ Glass?

ABOVE: ‘FERN’ Satin Angel gilding while staying bright and visible cannot compete with the mirroring of water gilding or mirrored Angel gilding. However this set of lettering colluded burnishing and garlic size which gave the gold a low mirror effect.

This added greatly to the beauty and final radiance of this set which was afterall gilded onto the nightmarish tinted glass… our technique defeated the dulling of the tinted glass and maintained this glow.

TAUTZ: In the earlier days (2014) searching for an Angel, we applied this Copper bronze finish which gave us a great platform to create our final product.

Our fab Angel Gilding on Glass?

How did you conquer dreaded tinted glass?

That will remain a mountain we have climbed and really are reluctant to disclose.

The real deal: NGS Angel Gilded Door panel, Kings Road Chelsea, 2024.

Angel gilding: gold plating by electroless chemical deposition.

Gold chloride is dissolved in water, mixed with other chemicals and poured on clean glass that has been treated with stannous chloride. The gold layer is delicate and usually translucent. To make an opaque, affordable and adherent mirror, a layer of silver is deposited over the gold. Glass gilders use the term angel gilding to distinguish the chemical process from gold leaf gilding also known as verre églomisé.

Seraina’s Angel gilding