LAURA
I received my Master of gilding diploma from Finland’s gilding guild in 2010, and I work mainly in conservation and restoration but today I also combine gilding with contemporary art and various artistic projects.
My path to becoming a gilder began in 1998 by starting as an apprentice at the local gilding workshop in Helsinki. I was full of enthusiasm to be a craftsman… or craftswoman. Previously, I had graduated as an interior painter, and I worked with decorative wall and ceiling paintings. I was 20 years old at the time. I had tried out some other crafts as well, like blacksmithing and leather work.
It’s hard to say what really got me hooked on gilding. Maybe it was the difficulty and challenge of how to handle the gold leaf, or its very fragile appearance… or the mysterious process that made objects look as if they were made of solid gold, when in reality there was only a thin, almost transparent layer of real gold on the surface.
In the gilding workshop where I was an apprentice, our main teacher was gilding master Viktor Slezin, who traveled from St. Petersburg, Russia to Helsinki to work and share his knowledge of the Eastern style of restoration and conservation of gilding.
During my three-year apprenticeship at Taidetyöhuone Snellman gilding workshop 1998–2001, I was very fortunate to work and study under the guidance of great gilding masters from Russia and Finland, and to be involved in the important conservation works in Finnish Orthodox churches and governmental premises and museums.
In 2001–2002 I worked at the National Gallery of Ireland under the supervision of Cathy Day Carrigan and other professionals from museum’s conservation department. At that time the new “Millennium Wing” of the museum was opened, and we undertook conservation work on a number of antique frames from the museum’s storage to put them back on display in the museum. Working with so many different European frames was a real learning experience, and during this time I learned more about the Western style of gilding used all over Europe.
The Finnish Cultural Foundation awarded me a scholarship to continue my studies in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2003. I went to work at the gilding workshop Masterskaja Slezin, where my main teacher Viktor Slezin worked with his mother and other master gilders.
I was really fortunate to be part of a traditional Russian gilding workshop nearly for two years and to be part of such professional team. Our main work at the time was the restoration of the Derzhavin Palace on the Fontanka Canal, with its interiors and museum exhibits as well as several private customers.
In St. Petersburg, I worked also several months in the gilding department of the Hermitage Museum where I did conservation for a gilded Empire chair under the supervision of master gilders working at the museum.
In 2005 I traveled from Russia directly to work in Sweden. I was hired by a local gilding studio, where I gained more experience in European gilding styles. It was there that I finally understood how special a country Finland is from a gilding perspective – a country where East meets West, at least when it comes to gilded surfaces.
GILDER JOURNEYMAN’S EXAMINATION
After my journeyman years, I did my first performance test work and passed my journeyman exam in 2006. I continued working together with other gilding companies and masters and started to create my own business as a gilder.
MASTER GILDER’S DEGREE
I was honored to receive my master gilder certification in 2010 when several gilding masters from Finnish Gilder’s Gild accepted my examination work and qualified me as a master of gilding.
Today, my work has expanded to include art and my own production, but my passion is still the restoration and conservation of objects from the past.