I’ve been a bit distracted lately, having spent about ten days at home in the past four months. I did manage to set up a pseudo-studio in Vermont and got some work done during the two months I spent there. Now I’m in Pt. Reyes, CA and for some reason find myself compelled to write rather than spend yet another morning hiking and photographing this gorgeous landscape. It’s probably best to follow such a compulsion or I fear I may never again write another blog entry.

Two nineteenth century circular federal frames, complete with their original convex mirrors, found their way to me this spring. The first was an elegant piece, adorned only with the classic gilded balls in the cove. The second was a more whimsical frame, mounted by a carved hippocampus (a horsey sea monster) and a couple of dolphins. Acanthus leaves sprouted from the bottom and draped over the top ridge. Reeded ebonized liners, typical of the era and style, completed each frame ensemble. Both frames were in pretty bad shape; the gesso fractured or missing, lost balls, separated joinery, and nasty metallic paint slimed over what were once lovely gilt frames.

Since it was in slightly better shape, I’ll start with the simpler frame and work my way through the step-by-step process of its restoration. It’s useful, at this point, to consider the difference between conservation and restoration. My website – www.livingwithgilt.com – has a more complete explanation but, essentially, conservation is halting the aging process of a frame while restoration is an effort to bring it back to some point in its past. Both approaches attempt to stabilize a piece so that no further deterioration occurs but conservation honors the frame’s history in its entirety, including gesso, ornamentation, and finish loss. Structural repairs or paint removal may be the extent of a conservation project while the restoration of the same frame may include re-creation of lost or damaged ornamentation and a complete re-gilding of a surface.  The work I did on this frame can probably be best described as a conservative restoration. The intention was to allow the age of the frame to show – keeping some of the dings and distressing that bespeak its history while doing away with the more eye-catching damage that detracts from its overall elegance. I’ll get into the details next time.  

The best part of the job, though, was working in a house that was designed in the style of the Mexican architect, Luis Barragan for whom I had acquired a passing appreciation while I was in architecture school a few decades ago. There are a lot of things to admire about his work but, most relevant to me now, given my current career, was his use of plain gilt panels as decorative wall elements. My client had one example on his patio of a simple panel, about 24” x 18”, in crushed composition leaf. I took that as a point of departure for my own work.

As a framer I am used to my work as subservient to the art it frames. A frame is generally meant to complement its art and though it may be beautiful and finely crafted it is usually not considered art itself.

Panels are something entirely different. In them I can explore the possibilities of gold leaf (and palladium, and silver) as an artistic medium in its own right.  At the same time I can expand upon some of the techniques I employ as a framer and conservator. Gilding is more than applying gold leaf to a prepared surface. The preparation of the surface itself is a significant part of the craft. Pastiglia,sgraffito, and punchwork are some of the ways of adding texture and color. Pastiglia is my favorite technique. It is usually associated with a linear buildup of gesso to create floral or calligraphic elements on an otherwise flat surface. I use it also to create entire images in low relief – trees, landscapes, abstracts.

Sgrafitto refers to painting over a gilded surface and then scratching through the paint to bring up the gold. Medieval and Renaissance artists excelled at this technique and, though I’ve used it on occasion, I think of it as more of a painter’s practice than a gilder’s. The emphasis is on the paint with gold as the highlight and that is exactly what I’m trying to get away from. I want gold to be the medium with paints or boles, undercoats and glazes to be working for the leaf rather than vice versa.

Punchwork is another technique used to astonishing effect especially in religious painting of the medieval and early Renaissance eras. Tapping a pattern into a gilded area with a small metal punch produces a textured, glittering effect that draws the eye while cutting the glare that swaths of untextured gold can suffer from. Saints’ haloes and the robes of the Virgin Mary were often subject to punchwork, the gold made even more precious through the precise patterns imposed by the artist. I use punch work, like other texturing techniques such as carving or incising the gesso, to differentiate one area of a composition from another.

More than anything, though, I rely on the beauty of the gold itself, and the patterns that happen serendipitously because of the nature of leaf. Higher karats of gold leaf, for example, reveal patterns that are decidedly different from lower karats or silver leaf when rubbed or distressed. Combining silver with palladium with sixteen karat gold creates patterns and textures dependent on the leaf itself as much as the colors and textures that I create before gilding begins.

Every panel begins with a vision for how I think I want it to look when it’s finished. Rarely does my ideation match the end result. Sometimes I get distracted or intrigued by a combination of colors or textures not thought of before. Sometimes what I thought was a good idea turns out not to be. Even that reality is welcome. For me these panels are about exploring the craft and pushing my boundaries as an artist and a gilder. This is how I learn. And also how I have fun.

Well. . .the most common methods of extracting gold from the earth are environmentally and socially devastating.

Last summer the U. S. Supreme Court decided that it was okay for the Coeur d’Alene Mines Corporation to dump 4.5 million tons of tailings into the Lower Slate Lake in the Tongass National Forest just north of Juneau, Alaska. Tailings is what remains after the gold has been removed from the rock or soil. It is toxic. Furthermore, dumping four and a half million tons of dirt, no matter how clean or filthy, will cause the level of the lake to rise about fifty feet. So, in the middle of a pristine national forest the company will build a 90 foot dam to prevent overflow. Even if Coeur d’Alene wanted to give lip service to post-mining reclamation, it would be pretty hard to do with that looming monolith of concrete. Maybe they could make it into a landscape trompe l’oeil. . .They’ve already fooled the Supreme Court into thinking that they have the best interests of the environment at heart. Or else the Supreme Court doesn’t care.

In other parts of the world mining companies and the governments that permit them to operate don’t even bother to pretend to want to contain toxic waste. Though there are less poisonous alternatives, arsenic is routinely used to leach gold from its ore. Rivers run foul with it. Land is stripped of all vegetation, villages destroyed, communities displaced. Short term corporate gain supersedes long term economic viability of a region.

And I am part of that. I rely on gold for my own livelihood. It creates a conundrum that I would be hypocritical not to face. The sun has not yet risen over Mt. Tom as I write this morning. Instead, it is shooting pink stripes across the sky in the most perfect image of Homer’s rosy fingered dawn that I have ever seen. The catalpa tree in the neighbor’s yard is silhouetted against the glow. Though it has long since dropped its leaves it continues to cling to a profusion of long, skinny pods that give it more visual bulk than most wintry trees. It reminds me of a slumbering Ent. Even more than through gilding, I find joy and peace in nature. It seems wrong that these two essential facets of my life are so at odds with one another.

Until I can make my living as a writer or I win the lottery, I will continue to buy gold leaf. I don’t expect the mining industry will notice me much either way. But it seems important that I do at least some small part to make people aware of the down side to gold. If enough people express disgust or outrage maybe things will change. I know I’m not alone in my concern. The Norwegian government, for example, recently divested itself of its stock in Barrick Gold, a Canadian based company, because of “its extensive and irreversible damage to the natural environment” in Papua New Guinea. An organization know as Earthworks, in collaboration with Oxfam, has initiated the “No Dirty Gold” campaign to encourage jewelry retailers to get their gold and other precious metals from mining companies that practice social and environmental responsibility. Companies as diverse as J.C. Penny and Tiffany’s have signed on. Target has not and I know where I won’t be getting my next pair of eye glasses.

There are also jewelers that specialize in recycled gold. Ethicalmetalsmiths.org is one place to start. The U.S. government might want to consider getting into the business. We no longer have a gold standard to support the dollar. Do we really need $130 billion dollars worth of bullion sitting in a vault in Kentucky?

This is a complex issue and I realize I’m barely grazing the surface. For example, gold miners in Nigeria need to make a living as much as I do. But the speed with which a mining conglomerate is able to play out a site means that a new gold mine, these days, is in business for as little as ten years. Some of them might last thirty. Then what? The land is dead. The water is toxic. The jobs are gone, relatives have moved away, communities and cultures obliterated, and there is no going back. It is so much better to go forward – with thoughtfulness and planning and respect for the planet and all the people that inhabit it. To do otherwise is the true root of all evil. It is called greed.

I may suggest other alternatives but am secretly relieved when they refuse because gold is a pleasure for me to work with. A cheaper alternative is brass leaf, also known as Dutch metal or composition leaf. Unlike the soft and malleable gold leaf, Dutch metal has a sort of crispy, brittle texture. I can hear it crinkle as I apply it to the frame. It is, not surprisingly, brassy looking and when compared side by side with gold, appears garish. Unlike gold which is capable of a wide range of subtle reflective qualities from highly burnished to matte, there is nothing subtle or mellow about Dutch metal. Sometimes that works for a particular piece of art but usually it is simply an affordable yellow metal alternative to the more elegant real gold leaf.

Another option for frame finishes is known as Roman gilding. This is the process of combining toxic bronzing powders with rabbit skin glue and applying it to the frame. It can be burnished and creates an interesting and unique, somewhat granular look. Though there is nothing inherently wrong with these finishes I find neither to be a satisfactory creative endeavor. The toxicity and textural qualities of the materials coupled with the knowledge that the finishes are doomed to a limited life span due to tarnishing makes them, at best, somewhat less than compelling, and at worst, downright offensive to my sensibilities as a gilder and a craftsman.

Gold is almost always a superior choice even if one has to struggle to pay for it. But pragmatism is often abandoned anyway, in favor not of the beauty or longevity of the material but of the simple allure of gold. I have seen people’s eyes widen in interest at the mere mention of what I do for a living. Then they squint in a none too subtle attempt to hide the gleam hinting at an odd mixture of curiosity and guilt that afflicts many when the subject of gold arises. It is almost as if we were talking about pornography. Or chocolate. There seems to be a universal infatuation with the metal that cuts across cultural and historical boundaries.

Gold is known as a noble element. It does not react to the environment. It does not tarnish or corrode. A second meaning has more to do with its place in our culture. Gold has always been used in connection with the most noble elements of a society – pharaohs, kings and gods. Its color is evocative of the sun which, despite the displacement of pagan beliefs by newer religions, is still a revered feature of our universe. It reflects back to the people the power and the divinity of those with whom it is associated. By its very place in the economic system, the mere use of gold is enough to express wealth or power.

Gold possesses a variety of characteristics that render it, on a pragmatic level, an attractive and useful material. It is heavy, malleable, and rare. These qualities conspired to turn gold into a practical commodity; coins could easily be struck from it, the value of which could be determined by a weight favorable in ratio to volume. In other words, gold coins didn’t have to be very large to still have value and thus made trade that much easier.  Access to productive ore was limited thus, so too, were the opportunities to flood the markets and disrupt those values. The plundering of New World Indian treasure troves by the Spanish or the California Gold Rush notwithstanding, gold has historically provided a stabilizing force in most advanced economic systems.

Before all that could happen, however, there had to be agreement that gold was worth it. It is on that level that my friend argued for the arbitrary value we place on the metal. I see his point but I disagree. While it may appear arbitrary the value we assign to gold exceeds the price we are willing to pay per ounce. It seems to have gained a mythical status for human beings as a species that has been multiple millennia in the making. There is something about gold that makes it unique, special, worthy of reverence by a common consensus that transcends the idiosyncrasies of culture and history.

During the Middle Ages gems and pearls were used to decorate books, boxes, and clothing of the very wealthy. What is interesting about this fashion is that diamonds were rarely used. It was the colored stones that were considered valuable. I mention this as an example of the shifting monetary values and aesthetic sensibilities we bring to our cultural practices and material pursuits. The value of gold has not been questioned since before the time of Gilgamesh. There is a reverence for the substance that is so basic to any culture that has discovered metallurgy that I believe its roots are grounded in what we, as a species hold most dear. The Egyptian’s said it best when they designated Ra god of the sun and ascribed to him the creation of all else. He is usually depicted as having the head of a hawk upon which is balanced a large golden disc, representative of the sun but best expressed by his ancient followers as of gold. The metal and the god and the life force held within the sun itself were thus inextricably linked.

By the late Middle Ages and into the early Renaissance the use of gold as an expression of wealth, power and divinity found its most profound expression yet in the work of the Italian artists and craftsmen that flourished as western Europe emerged from the so-called Dark Ages. The skillful use of gilt, burnishing the metal to true luminescence, playing gold ground against rich temperas, creating a composition that truly takes into account the qualities of the medium – this is as close to depicting divinity as humankind has yet to come.

Later, as the Renaissance aged into the Baroque and declined into the Rococo, the craft of gilding suffered a kind of hubris. Rather than complimenting a work of art it became the work. Gold for the sake of gold, to impress and awe by its overwhelming presence, became the raison d’etre of the gilder. And from there, as the nouveau riche and then the masses sought to emulate the aristocracy, cheap alternatives were found to satiate desires that could not be funded. Graceless brass leaf, incapable of the confident luster of gold made its appearance. Or bronzing powders and paints concocted from noxious metal dust. Turning black over time, their facades of nobility are surrendered after a mere decade or so of exposure to the elements. The egalitarian in me appreciates the intention. The artist cringes at the feeble deceit.

While the allure of gold may have its foundation in its primeval associations with the life force of the sun and pagan beliefs, its power and charisma continue today. Even children learn at an early age a veneration for the material. The presence of a child in my studio is occasion to demonstrate our cultural reverence for the stuff. Asking her to hold out her hands, I place a sheet of the leaf in one palm. In the current market one leaf of gold costs around two dollars, depending on the karat. The child will look at me with a kind of crazy awe as if unable to believe she has been entrusted with such a privilege. I then ask her to rub her hands together. Upon doing so the leaf, because it is so thin, so insubstantial, will essentially disappear, becoming a few small crumbs of yellow detritus clinging to her moist palms. She will assume a look of disappointment, wonder and intrigue. Her suspicions have been confirmed that the material is magical. She has found what I have long known and a thousand societies have reiterated throughout history – that there can be no familiarity with which to breed contempt for the substance is ever elusive.

D.C. was conceived after that initial conflict with England. The politics, along with the economic issues that always hover at politics’ periphery, led to building our capital in the middle of a swamp. While that may be perceived as a harbinger of the typical decision making acumen that characterizes our leadership, the more thoughtful and worthy intentions of We the People are well articulated in the public spaces that define the city.

Before I continue let me just say that I am well aware that D.C. is more than its tourist points of interest or the seat of our federal government. Class and racial tensions ripple beneath the surface of most American cities and D.C. is no exception. Few tourists see the poverty and neglect that infuses many of the neighborhoods surrounding the Marble and Mall section of D. C.  Without going into the particulars of that exceedingly complex subject, it’s at least important to acknowledge it and know that we can do better.

I’ve wandered around D.C. before, browsed the various museums that comprise the Smithsonian, demonstrated on the Mall and wept at the Vietnam War Memorial. On my most recent trip I only had one free day so I walked from Dupont Circle to the Library of Congress, stopping at the Renwick Gallery of American Craft for an impromptu perusal along the way. The Renwick is another essay unto itself.

When Ken Burns produced his series on The National Parks he articulated a gratitude that I have felt for years. I’ve hiked in Denali and scuba dived in the Florida Keys and camped, meandered, slept, photographed, picnicked, and day dreamed in most of the National Parks in between. Only Hawaii remains unexplored and I hope to change that sooner rather than later. The creation of our Park System is one of the most profoundly democratic and thoughtful actions our government has ever taken. It denotes long term thinking, a strategy for which it and We are not generally known.

The other institution for which I am continually grateful is our public libraries. If our national parks are an expression of the natural beauty and our connection with the land for which this country should be both proud and protective, our libraries are repositories for the uniquely human products of the intellect – expressions of ambitions, ideas, fantasies and wisdoms made material in that mind-boggling invention known as the book. Or, lately, the computer. While I may have a preference for print on paper over more recent forms of technology, what really matters is that the ideas these inventions allow us to disseminate are thought to be important enough to preserve. And, even more significant, that anyone can access them. This is what I love about this county.

The Library of Congress building is quite beautiful in that marbly, beaux arts ornate sort of way. The gilding, the mosaics, and the statuary are impressive. I stood outside the door of the reading room and thought “I want to be in there.” The stacks soar above the circular reading area and the light streams through the upper windows in a pleasingly diffuse way. The desks are wooden and worn. I once wrote a description of a fictional reading room fantastically tucked into a downtown New Orleans bookstore. It is both disturbing and surprising how close the reality is to my own invention.

One is only allowed to peer through a small window into that privileged space and I thought it a rarefied world to which I had no hope of gaining access but, no – anyone with proper identification can get a Library of Congress card. The lesson there is – it never hurts to ask. The guard told me where to go and I took off, across the street and down a few confusing corridors, to a bustling little fluorescent lit room. I was surprised that it was as crowded as it was. I filled out a form, showed my Massachusetts drivers license, had my picture taken, and was presented with an official, plastic laminate Library of Congress card. No charge, no hassle. I keep it tucked in my briefcase next to the little yellow paper card that allows me to check out books and DVDs from the tiny collection in Huntington, Vermont. I love the contrast and the similarity. There is no security screening in Huntington but there is no 19th century translation of Cennino Cennini’s Il LIbro dell’Arte either. I’m working on a manuscript at the moment for which such material is relevant but I don’t need that reason or excuse. I don’t need to be affiliated with an institution of higher learning or an internationally recognized museum to give authority to my curiosity.

It has been said, and I fear it’s true, that we are becoming a nation of anti-intellectualism. When a presidential candidate’s qualifications for the job are based on whether one wants to spend time drinking beer with him or her, I think we’re in trouble.

I find solace and hope in the continued existence of the Library of Congress. While the building itself can and should be admired on its own terms for its design and craftsmanship, I don’t think that is the main draw for the visitors that flock to it each day. Not all the books that the Library of Congress owns are actually held in that building but it is representative of the desire to honor the human impulse to articulate and make material the workings of the mind. I’m not sure why that’s considered a negative thing by so many people but that is how I define intellectualism. And to participate in that endeavor. That is why I visited the Library of Congress. I went there with the vague notion that it would be a sort of pilgrimage to books, and authors, and ideas. I left with a little plastic card that told me that I, too, am welcome to participate in that profoundly and uniquely human endeavor. Anyone is. I may claim it as my right but it will, also, always be a privilege.

I live in Easthampton, Massachusetts at the moment, just on the other side of Mt. Tom and Interstate 91 from Holyoke. Galvanized sap buckets dot the woods in the spring here, too. The nearby town of Hadley has some of the most fertile soil in the world and, though the town planning strategy seems to be non-existent and overly welcoming to crop insensitive institutions like Home Depot and Wal-Mart, the remaining farms are both beautiful and productive. But there is another side to New England that bespeaks a history much less placid.

My studio is in a sprawling old textile mill complex. There are at least three abandoned mills in this town alone, two of which now house studios and small businesses. The third is a gutted shell of exquisite brickwork and stark concrete. It stands next to the new bike path that leads into Northampton and begs to be converted into condos and maybe a squash club. Or low income housing and a health clinic. Textiles and paper were as important to the economy of New England as farming, and the factories and mills, scattered throughout the region still stand to testify to its history. I think they also point to its future.

It is often said that if you want to know what a society values, look at its architecture. Consider what buildings merit thoughtful design and scrupulous craftsmanship. In this part of Massachusetts they are the barns and mills. But, no matter how well constructed a building might be, none can survives decades of neglect. I am not one to argue that any building should be saved  simply because it is old and once was beautiful. Sometimes it makes more sense to let them go. But there are costs involved that rarely make it into the many analyses that drive these sorts of decisions.

My studio is small and when I first started using it I intended for it to be only a writing space. But the stream that runs beside the building rushes soothingly below my window. The ceilings are about sixteen feet high and the two double-hung windows soar nearly to that height. The light is lovely here and unless it is exceedingly dreary outside, or past sunset, I never turn on artificial lighting. It is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Gradually, my gilding work has somehow made its way over here and I am content to make this my all-purpose work space. This building seems to have been designed with its inhabitants in mind. I cringe at the thought of a typical modern studio – I imagine small, inoperable windows, inadequate heat in the winter, no fresh air, lousy ventilation, foul smelling wall-to-wall carpeting. . .

If this building had been torn down when the mill closed in the 1970s I suspect the town of Easthampton would not be experiencing the renaissance that it now enjoys. The holiday Open Studio weekend we just held brought visitors from Boston and the Berkshires. Since I moved to the area, about ten years ago, I have watched the town transform itself from a depressed, depressing victim of an industry’s demise to a thriving little city with great restaurants, a dynamic artists community, and a proliferation of business where once there was a profusion of abandoned and shuttered shops.

The transformation, though, has come at some cost. Looking down on the city from the heights of Mt. Tom the mill complexes sprawl impressively. But, recently, so too do the new housing complexes. It is necessary, of course, to accommodate Easthampton’s growth with new housing. But here we get back to how we express what is important to us.

Farmland has been sacrificed in order to build unattractive, unimaginative little houses. Meanwhile, another mill sits like a bombed out war victim. So the loss is on several fronts – farmland, aesthetics, and the resources necessary to build the new roads and homes that comprise the development. I find only the smallest consolation in the belief that those new houses won’t last more than a few decades. They look like they’re made of cardboard. And something still needs to be done with that mill.

I understand that not everyone wants to live in a renovated nineteenth century factory. But the landscape of New England, including its mills, are an expression of both its history and its priorities. That so many still exist gives rise to the hope that they are perhaps still valued. The potential for an evolution rather than a remaking of that landscape is a priority well worth pursuing.

The next step is to separate the caps from the nut. This is much easier to do when the acorns are dried. The drying process sometimes causes the shells to split or to shrink so much the caps no longer fit tightly. I toss those and, for the rest, make sure that each cap stays with its original nut. Then I drill each part. The caps need a hole big enough for a waxed thread hanging loop, the nuts a hole that allows me to impale them upside down on brads tapped into a piece of scrap wood. Acorns have a fuzzy coating which I rub off with a soft cloth. If I skip that step the gilded finish will look gritty. Gold leaf has an amazing capacity to magnify every nuance, flaw, and detail of the surface it covers so I buff the acorns before sticking them on the brads and painting on a coat of shellac.

There are two ways to apply gold leaf to something – oil or water gilding. You can read about both at my website – livingwithgilt.com. A sealed surface is necessary for oil gilding and that is the function of the shellac. I also put a coat of it on the caps, even though I don’t gild them, because it adds a touch of gloss and enhances their beautiful scale-like pattern.

Shellac dries quickly and two coats is enough to provide a good seal on the acorns. I let them sit overnight to make sure the shellac is thoroughly hardened and then paint on a thin coat of gold size. This is a varnish like substance. It is allowed to dry until it loses most, but not all of its tack. It I wait too long it will not have enough stickiness left to allows the gold to adhere. If I don’t wait long enough the finish will be mushy and dull looking. It’s possible, if the size is not applied evenly, to get both effects on the same surface. Not pretty.

I used to be rather cavalier about applying the leaf but, with gold now at over $1000 an ounce, I try to be more conscientious. Gold leaf is incredibly thin and is attracted to just about anything that has oil or moisture. If given the opportunity it will float about the studio on the most imperceptible of breezes but the slightest touch of a human hand captures it and it will not let go. A specialized brush known as a gilder’s tip is thus used to transfer the leaf from rouge coated paper booklet to acorn. The ones I use for gold are made of squirrel hair. I also have a heavier one for silver leaf that is a bit larger and made from badger hair.Once the leaf is applied, it is pressed into the surface with a soft cloth to make sure it has adhered, and then gently buffed to bring up the gloss. The size is still a bit soft so I let the acorns sit for a few days to allow it to harden. During that time I thread the caps and, when the size is hard enough to handle without leaving fingerprint impressions, I rejoin the cap with its now gilded shell and – voila – a gilded acorn ornament.

It has been a great year for acorns. They’re huge. They’re plentiful. They seem to be making up for last year when the season was so dismal that I collected none for there were none to be found, and worried that global warming had finally caught up with even the Mighty Oak. My concern extended to the squirrels and deer who depend on acorns to get them through the winter. As much as I am anxious about the health of the planet I have since learned that nature still has a way of taking care of her own and that the acorn crop is known to be cyclical. An especially good year often follows a bad one. It is probably the oak trees’ way of diminishing the squirrel population so they can replenish their own. In the grand cycle of acorn crops, last year was, apparently, normal as is this year. I fear, though, that I am now spoiled for humongous acorns and typical years will look peaked in comparison to 2009.

One of the things I noticed as I wandered the woods with Ella, my chocolate brown, four-legged companion of the last twelve years, is that an acorn is not just an acorn. There are dozens of different species and I’ve only just begun to differentiate between the generic “red” and “white” oaks. Both red and black oaks, for example, are of the red oak family. It gets confusing but I’ve learned that white oaks tend to have rounded leaves and red oaks more pointed ones. The acorns of red oaks are usually more squat than those of white oaks. Black oaks, which belong to the red oak family have acorns that are often too squat though there is variation from tree to tree. White oaks (quercus alba) are a species belonging to the larger white oak family. Their acorns are more elongated and, at first, I thought them to be rather elegant looking. They tend to pucker and crack as they dry, however, which makes them less than ideal for gilding. All these oak trees, along with others I’ve yet to identify, live together on the mountain where I walk nearly every day. Identification is an education in process but, because each tree seems to produce unique acorns, collecting is a matter of aesthetic rather than species preference.

Acorns tend to start falling in mid August where I live, in western Massachusetts. They are still green that early in the season but also tend to retain their caps. By mid October, as the season nears its end, most of the acorns are capless and brown. Brown is fine but capless renders them useless for my purposes. For me, the month of September is the best time to collect acorns.

There is no fear of competing with squirrels this bumper crop year. Simple overabundance is not the only reason. Apparently there is an unpredictability to tannin content in acorns though white oak species tend to have less than red. Like humans, animals prefer sweeter nuts and, if this is a year of high tannin, squirrels may not be as inclined to collect the bitter fruit. Still, they have to eat something and I haven’t seen as many squirrels this year as I usually do. It may well be that nature is taking turns and, in response to the dearth of acorns last year, this one is the year of the oak. The squirrel, and maybe the deer populations probably suffered declines when their food source was scarce. Presumably they will recover over the next year or two and the cycle will begin again.

That is, in a nutshell so to speak, what I’ve learned of acorns, the lifecycle of oak trees and oak identification this fall. I would have remained blissfully ignorant had I not been inclined to collect acorns for gilding and thus had my curiosity piqued by the extremes of two successive seasons. There is plenty more information out there – about the many oak species, leaf and bark differentiation, and how to make acorn flour. If ever there was a year to try that culinary experiment it would be this year but, now that the collecting is over, I’m preoccupied with gilding rather than eating. More on both to follow.

Living with Gilt is my way of exploring the connections of craftsmanship and my practice of it with the other things in life that I value, ranging from the mundane to the profound. The pursuits by which I define my days are generally considered artistic. Whether they actually are or not is not for me to say. I struggle with the label of artist, cringing at the stereotypical images of liquor induced tantrums, weeks in which I forget to bathe while I produce monumental masterpieces later found moldering in a friend’s basement after my early demise, feeding my depression with passionate but ultimately dysfunctional relationships that leave me catatonic with grief for months and years on end, traversing chasms of sorrow, misery, and frustration on the most gossamer threads of hope and the misty vision of a temporary terra firma upon which I will produce my next great work, never trusting that it will remain stable beneath me and, indeed, helping to set the dynamite that will ensure that it crumbles away as I claw at the ruins and then leap from the falling debris, praying that at least my threads of hope will not desert me and always marveling that, in her last moments, Virginia Woolf managed to keep from pulling those rocks from her pockets. I have often flirted with, even as I fought against, the forces that compel that kind of life. I’m always looking for a better way.

I make my living as a gilder. The application of gold leaf to otherwise common materials – wood, glass, pottery, or stone, for example – is an ancient craft dating back at least to the building of the pyramids. My work has mostly been devoted to picture frames though lately I’ve taken to gilding wooden panels just for the beauty of the finish and the joy I find in the process of creating them. Because of what and with whom I spend my time – with paintings and drawings, photographers and gallery owners, museum curators and art aficionados – people often mistake my work for art rather than craft. It may be both but I embrace the label of craftsman and the practice of craft as the armature upon which to shape my life.

Craft is usually thought to hold a place in our culture of somewhat lesser status than art but I believe good art cannot happen without first mastering the craft that provides its foundation. Craft is the more mundane stuff that allows for the expression of creativity. It is knowledge and understanding of how to mix colors and choose the correct brush if you are a painter. It is selecting the right rasp or the most appropriate wood if you are a furniture maker. The final product may be irrelevant to the craftsman. That is the concern of the artist whose primary role is to envision an outcome. Craftsman and artist may find themselves embodied in a single individual but it is the craftsman who knows how to achieve the final work, whatever it might be, and its success depends on mastery of craft.

I’ve come to believe that anything can be crafted and those things that I most value are worthy of the effort. I suppose I could apply the tenets of craftsmanship to vacuuming or reading People magazine. I could try to assume a sort of Zen awareness of all that I do. But that would dilute the value of the endeavors I hold most dear and to which I bring the most enthusiasm and the deepest reverence. For me, craftsmanship is about sincerity of intention. One can craft a picture frame, a bonsai tree or a life. If I have learned my craft well I believe there’s a good chance that, through it, I will end up with a work of art.