A friend has sent this image of Marino Menegazzo’s gold leaf in Los Angeles.
Lest you think, as I did at first, that the cylinder’s surface itself is covered with gold leaf (I tip my hat to the legendary Ca’ d’Oro on the Grand Canal), let me clarify that it is made of more than 350,000 glass and gold-leaf mosaic tiles. Some of the original tiles were so deteriorated that they had to be replaced, so preservation specialist John Fidler turned to the original producer, Orsoni, in Venice. Not for the first time, Orsoni turned to Menegazzo for the required leaves of gold to be placed within the new glass tiles.
That’s all I know but it made my day.
4 Comments
Wow!
And mine!
What serendipity!
What is the weight of the gold on that façade? It’s pointless to ask what it’s worth, as that changes minute-by-minute.
Thanks for that link to Orsoni, what is it about glass mosaic that is so fascinating and exciting, in fact, one of my goals before I get too old to do it is to travel once again to Sicily and find those fabulous mosaics from a Roman villa up in the hills its name I don’t remember at the moment. I’ll try again next year……
Another wow!