# Art/Object Issues > Conservation >  Gilded frame touch ups

## edwardjameswhelan

Does anyone have any recommendations for watercolors/ other materials that could be used to touch up some minor scratches on gilded frames? 
Thanks!

----------


## edwardjameswhelan

The most accessible article I've found is by Hubert Baija from the Rijksmuseum. Here is an excerpt from an article about restoring a 17th century frame:

“An experiment with shell gold was quite successful, but it seemed wasteful to use up so much of it on such a large surface. Watercolors made with mica gold pigment combined with raw umber and black proved to be a good alternative (figs. 15–17).14 In the next stage, these gold-colored retouches were toned to a warmer, less greenish tint with alcohol-soluble walnut-colored wood stain in a solution of synthetic resin15 in ethanol. The resin also gives a degree of protection against handling of the objects for the water-soluble layers underneath.”

The article can be found on AIC or at the link here:  
https://www.researchgate.net/profile...ication_detail

----------


## T. Ashley McGrew

Edward, 
I love when someone posts a question or request and then proceeds to educate us about the issue. Pretty awesome. Unfortunately the way our current set-up operates you only get responses on the forum when members have subscribed to this topic area in the forum. The realistic way to get a higher volume of responses seems to still be to post on the List Serve since the query goes straight into a couple of thousand inboxes. I know one person in the OKC area that has some good training and will ask a coworker in my own institution.

As an aside, working at Stanford places me in the heart of silicon valley and despite outreach here and consulting with three different website experts as an organization we have still not been able to find anyone who could answer the seemingly simple question "How do we get our forum to behave like a list serve?" Anyway thanks for posting the question to begin with and for then sharing resources. Very cool. I also try to do both when I am able.  Cheers, Ashley

----------

