In embroidery there are some jobs based solely on making a garment appear as if it is ancient or other jobs like replacing a damaged piece on an existing garment. In goldwork, replacing a damaged piece isn’t easy – getting the same look using a shiny new piece of goldwork is difficult. Luckily there are ways of aging goldwork quickly to cheat the time to achieve the look necessary. Below we have London Embroidery School’s newly finished silver coloured goldwork cuffs.
This clever technique centers around a very common kitchen ingredient, eggs.
Once the eggs are hard boiled, take off the shell and seal in with the embroidery and allow it to sit for a short time.
Here you can see the warmth from the eggs creating steam. The steam carries sulphur released from the eggs to the goldwork.
This eats away at the finish, giving it an aged, tarnished look. Depending on how much you want to exaggerate this will depend on how long you leave it in there for. You can smash the eggs to release more sulphur.
The above piece is the cuff before the antiquing process and below is after, you can see the difference between the two, now just to do the other one to match!
This clever technique will save you lots of time and effort, and the outcome is great. Intermediate goldwork classes start on the 12th October so book your place now.
