So today I got to try another art project through PII at which I had decidedly more success with than pottery. Together with PII we walked from Rifare to Higashi Chaya (about a 25 minute walk...I don't know why they didn't have us take a bus?) to a gold-leafing store. We were escorted into a back room where there were tables set up with these supplies:
A box cutter, a ruler, masking tape, a rubber mat, and a pair of chopsticks.
The process for making a pair of gold-leaf chopsticks was fairly simple. You first use the masking tape to block out a part of the top of the chopstick. Whatever is covered by tape won't be covered by the gold leaf in the end. So we all went to work cutting the masking tape and sticking it onto the chopsticks. Most people did some variation of stripes or swirls (it's easiest to cut masking tape into stripes hahaha) and I ended up with a pattern like this:
After painting the top of the chopsticks with some kind of glue and letting them sit for a few minutes, we received a sheet of gold leaf that was 1/100th of a millimeter thick (or was that 1/1000?). Either way, if you even so much as LOOKED at it funny it started to tear or crinkle. You placed your chopstick on one end of it and rolled it until it was about halfway across the square, and then did the same with the other half and other stick. Then you broke them apart and, using a brush, sloughed (bonus vocab points for me) the gold off until what was left had magically and smoothly adhered itself to the chopsticks.
The gold leaf in the bottom picture is what was left behind. Apparently you can also eat it...so everyone was literally just picking up gold leaf and putting it in their mouths. It didn't really taste like anything and melted on your tongue, it was that thin.
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A little bit is good for you, but too much gold can give you heavy metal poisoning (there was a House episode about that, and apparently Chinese nobility used to commit suicide by eating too much gold).
Finally, we used the box cutters to pick at the masking tape until it peeled off, leaving you with the final product:
Now we just have to let them sit for at least two weeks before use.
I feel so wealthy right now...
A box cutter, a ruler, masking tape, a rubber mat, and a pair of chopsticks.
The process for making a pair of gold-leaf chopsticks was fairly simple. You first use the masking tape to block out a part of the top of the chopstick. Whatever is covered by tape won't be covered by the gold leaf in the end. So we all went to work cutting the masking tape and sticking it onto the chopsticks. Most people did some variation of stripes or swirls (it's easiest to cut masking tape into stripes hahaha) and I ended up with a pattern like this:
After painting the top of the chopsticks with some kind of glue and letting them sit for a few minutes, we received a sheet of gold leaf that was 1/100th of a millimeter thick (or was that 1/1000?). Either way, if you even so much as LOOKED at it funny it started to tear or crinkle. You placed your chopstick on one end of it and rolled it until it was about halfway across the square, and then did the same with the other half and other stick. Then you broke them apart and, using a brush, sloughed (bonus vocab points for me) the gold off until what was left had magically and smoothly adhered itself to the chopsticks.
The gold leaf in the bottom picture is what was left behind. Apparently you can also eat it...so everyone was literally just picking up gold leaf and putting it in their mouths. It didn't really taste like anything and melted on your tongue, it was that thin.
A little bit is good for you, but too much gold can give you heavy metal poisoning (there was a House episode about that, and apparently Chinese nobility used to commit suicide by eating too much gold).
Finally, we used the box cutters to pick at the masking tape until it peeled off, leaving you with the final product:
Now we just have to let them sit for at least two weeks before use.
I feel so wealthy right now...
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