All that glisters is not gold—
Often have you heard that told.
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold.
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.
Had you been as wise as bold,
Young in limbs, in judgment old,
Your answer had not been inscrolled
Fare you well. Your suit is cold—

William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act II Scene 7

An orotone is usually a gelatine silver print on a glass surface which is developed, fixed and washed, this image is then covered with a “gold” varnish. The image is viewed through the glass, so it needs to be printed in reverse if the orientation appears correct.

I prefer to use a carbon transfer or carbro technique to make orotones, this gives me much more flexibility and control in tonal ranges and sizes for the final work, but it is a lot more work .

Edward Curtis produced some wonderous orotones and a lot of information is on the websites about him. It is not certain what the formula is for the gold varnish he used, but banana oil (aircraft dope), benzine, sandarac and many other substances are suggested – the gold colour is unlikely to be gold, due to the cost, powdered brass and bronze powders are more probable.

Powdered gold would be suitable and for a 24 x 30 cm print, I estimate the bullion cost today would be about 120 euro – carefully used it could be much less as only a very, very thin coating of gold is needed. So interestingly making orotones from real pure gold is not out of the question. Gold leaf is a wafer-thin gold foil with a thickness of 0.000125 mm. One millimetre would correspond to 8,000 layers of gold leaf stacked on top of each other.

An orotone can be made from gold leaf, I have tried this and the cost is relatively small, about 5 euro for a full plate print, or less if you are more careful and skilled than I am. I did not like the result, gold leaf is fiddley to work with and I could not get a perfect smooth finish, it looked like small plates of gold had been layered onto the image- I tried burnishing the surface but this messed up the image. I was working with my preferred printing technique onto glass which is carbro and this gives a three dimensional profile to the image, so burnishing is not possible (as I found out) perfect for a liquid varnish, but not for gold leaf.

I posted ‘putting on the glitz’ describing the method I use for the basic orotone coating. This coating in fragile and must be protected with a safe coating over it.

Coatings and protection

For all coatings onto glass I like to use the same technique as with wet plate collodion. after many thousand attempts I am getting the hang of it.

I make my own varnishes for coating the carbon, painted or silver-gelatine image. After a lot of research I now dissolve paraloid B72 resin into toluene for a 10 percent solution and then mix in metallic powder or pigment. I have had good success with most metallic powders, after hundreds of experiments with pigments I have only found a few which are worthwhile.

Baryta
Another varnish I use a lot is one with barium sulphate, I find it is tricky with toluene as the carrier so make the baryta varnish with gelatine and coat at 39 degrees C.

I have also found that  the clear paraloid/toluene varnish is perfect for wet plate collodion, simple to use, cheap and totally archival (this varnish is used by museums).

The coating is very fragile. Curtis only sold his orotones fully framed and sealed. Once I have coated the printed image with a suitable varnish, I recoat this again with another protective coat. I sometimes put a second coat of baryta over the gold and then make a third coat of a water based gouache varnish. A traditional coating is using gilsonite (bitumen) I have tried this, but unless it is a real japanned technique, this type of coating is not as good as a simple commercial artists finishing varnish.

My preference now is to varnish with the first layer on the print, then coat with a second protective varnish and then a third coat of transparent professional artists varnish. I then back the glass with a thick archival paper, and use a permanent sealed frame to present the image.

I am currently experimenting with a second coating of powdered glass – mainly because this was used by Dora Maar, (one of my heroes) in her Paris studio when she helped Picasso create “Guernica” in 1937 .

PVA

There can be a problem with a toluene based overcoat varnish as this can act on the existing “gold” varnish. The advantage of toluene is that is is quick drying. A safer varnish is to use a PVA base which is water soluble and will not attack the toluene. I mix the PVA with water and diatomaceous earth and sometimes a pigment.