I decided to enrol a gilding restoration course and painting course in Florence, a city that has always inspired me because of the local passion for craftsmanship. Once there, I started to learn hand by hand with great restoration professionals, as well as with other incredible people who opened the doors of their workshops to share their knowledge with me.
Personally, I had never worked with gold or silver leaves and I did not know anything about working techniques with these materials. The artisan process fascinated me from the very beginning, I never imagined that it would be so demanding, but at the same time so enjoyable.
Thanks to these courses, I not only learned a new artistic technique, directly derived from ancient methods, but, what is more, I finally decided to decorate my own picture frames, on which I could let my imagination go and practice using this technique to create the pieces myself.
First, I learned how to apply gold and silver leaves, trying different techniques, on wooden boxes. From there, I went to picture frames, working first small ones and, little by little, taking enough courage as to try with bigger ones. All in all, the whole process took several months, during which I enjoyed learning and working with my own hands. It is so satisfying to learn to use such an ancient technique from scratch and to be able to put it into practice to create your own works!
