Red cabbage with icy raindrops, Raleigh City Garden, Raleigh, NC. Color print on vellum with silver leaf

Weathered barn, Orange County, NC. Black and white print on vellum with silver leaf.

Ovenbirds

Abandoned house, Marion, NC. Sepia print on vellum with gold leaf.

Gilded Photographs

One-of-a-kind photographic prints on vellum backed with gold, silver, and copper leaf

Weathered door, Fontainebleu, France. Color print on vellum with gold leaf

Ghost Vines, downtown Raleigh, NC.

Black & white print on vellum with gold leaf.

This series celebrates the ordinary — concrete walls, broken-down buildings, rusted cars, leafless trees. I’ve printed these images on transparent vellum, then backed them with gold, silver and copper as a way to honor their profound beauty.

All images are 8” x 10” and are matted and framed to 11” x 14”.

The American poet Robert Frost elevates the ordinary in his sonnet, “The Ovenbird.” The sonnet form is usually reserved for grand themes — love, honor, death. Frost uses it to contemplate a small, brown bird who nests on the forest floor. The bird’s call is modest but profound, asking “in all but words / … what to make of a diminished thing.”

Rusted vintage car, Richard’s Auto Sales & Salvage, Denton, NC. Color print on vellum with copper leaf.

Rusted Ford, Chatham County, NC. Color print on vellum with silver leaf

Sunset at Driftwood Beach, Jekyll Island, Georgia. Color print on vellum with gold leaf

Winter landscape, Le Doubs, France. Color print on vellum with gold leaf

Winter tree, Burnsville, NC. Black & white print on vellum with gold leaf.

The Ovenbird

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird.

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

 –Robert Frost (1916)

How to Make a Gilded Photograph

  • Photograph an object or scene or object. Choose one with a good amount of clear or open space to allow the leaf to glow through.

  • Print the photograph onto a translucent paper called vellum. Vellum is traditionally made from goatskin. I prefer the non-animal kind.

  • Optional: Spray shellac to the front of the print to stabilize the image and add sheen.

  • Apply Photo Mount (acid-free, archival) to the back of the print. Let it dry.

  • Carefully, carefully, apply gold,* silver,* or copper leaf to the sticky vellum. The leaf is so thin and light that it can fly away or tear with the slightest wrong movement.

    This step takes lots of patience. I’m impatient by nature. This process forces me to show down. Gilding can be downright meditative.

  • Cover the leaf-backed print with wax paper and place weights on the edge to flatten it as it dries. (Vellum curls when wet. So annoying. Take a breath.)

  • Remove the weights and brush extra leaf off the dried print.

  • If the image seems to warrant it, add small amounts of leaf to the front of the image.

  • Spray a light layer of clear shellac to the gilded side of the print. This keeps the leaf from tarnishing.

  • If all goes according to plan, the metal leaf will glow through the lightest parts of the photograph,

    elevating your “ordinary” image into something precious and one-of-a-kind.

  • *Genuine gold and silver are prohibitively expensive. I use leaf made of brass and copper.