a paravent

I dont know exactly what kind of inspiration started me to compose the design for a paravent in the summer of 1995.May be it was just the remeniscence of this tiny autumnal tree overflown with butterflies in my parents garden. May be the discovery of this secluded little valley full of thistles and butterflies, near by the small village I live in - and shurly my fresh enthusiasm for japanese Art Equiped with a small scetch on paper, a thistle and a captured butterfly, I went to work. And soon it was finished, my first paravent..

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a gilded gesso

This is a receipt for gesso on wood:
Mix 1 part of glue with 3½ parts of cold(!) water and let it rest over night until the water dissolves the glue. The glue within the pot has to be heated up to max. 70ºC. Remove the pot from the cooker and scatter very carefully 3 parts of white chalk to the solution. Stop scattering when the chalk starts to cover the surface of the liquid. Now you can stir the gesso with a large wooden spatula.
For a coloured gesso replace 1 part of chalk by a paint, for example yellow ochre.

another paravent

It was springtime in 2002 when my old friend Olaf and Amade married. Some time ago he had dropped down a few words about Gele's paravent: he would like to own that sort of elegant furniture too. So me and Gele decided fo fullfill his wish and went to work. We both shared in covering the boards with original gesso ( see the receipt above), which, when using wood, has to be applied on both sides. Therefore we used handsome, japanese spatulas in order to spare time, dust and effort when polishing the gesso to perfect smoothness. The backside of the paravent was impregnated with shellac and gild using gold leaf on mixtion (gold size). (see picture above). The appearance of an antique gilded surface was created using a selfmade greenish, gold-coloured lacquer and a stencil. After painting the blossoming plumtree to the screen, the paravent was varnished with shellac and matted with bee's wax.

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