Custer chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, Black Hills, D.T. [S.D.]) 1880-1890, 1889-09-14
A LESSON IN GOLD LEAF MAKING.

A Blonde and a Brunette Teach 1t Free
Daily in IA Park Row Basement.
New York Sun.
Hundreds of people stop every day to
look down the steps leading into the
basement of one of the old buildings on
that part of Park row that used to be
Chatham street. Behind closed doors
at the foot of the steps they see two
women seated facing each other at a
small wooden bench covered with white
oilcloth. One woman is blonde, plump
and smiling; the other is dark, thin and
melancholy. The top of the bench is
made of three boards, each about ten
inches wide, and the middle one is
raised two inches higher than the others,
leaving two cracks that wide, facing
each Woman. Beneath the table is hung
a wooden trough so that whatever falls
through the cracks goes into it. At the
left OF each woman is a thick pad about
five inches square, apparently Of many
pieces of kid laid together.
The oma raises one Of the kid
pieces with her left hand and a gleam-
ing yellow surface lies exposed. With
a pair of wooden tongs nine inches long,
each foot about the size of a lead pencil,
in her right hand, the woman makes a
deXterous jab at the yellow surface, and
pulls 1T away with a ~futtering, CULVER
ing sheet Of gold. 1t seems to be rum
ping up into all sorts of shapes, but the
woman blows on it and it settles down,
o~utspread, fiat upon the white oilcloth
before her. Its edges on every side are
irregular and ragged. Her left hand has
grasped an arrangement of two steel
knives with rocker edge fastened to-
gether parallel to each other, about four
inches apart, by rods. She places this
over the golden sheet, so that the knives
rest upon two of the irregular edges. A
little rock and the edges are cut straight,
while the irregular bits trimmed off curl
up and flutter about. d~exterous Whit
of the woman's breath sends them kit
ing like dead leaves through the crack
in the table. The knives meantime
have trimmed the other two edges, and
as the ragged bits from them too go
through the crack, the square yellow
sheet is caught up in the wooden tongs
and whisked over to a book of blank
pink paper, each page just the size Of
the yellow square that lies before the
woman. 1t probably is inclined to be
rebellious and double up or wrinkle,
but another breath from the woman's
lips spreads it out fat, and the pink
page is turned in an instant, concealing
it from view.
All this is done so quickly that the
throng at the top of the steps holds its
breath as the golden sheets whisk about,
and the little ragged leaves iutter
through the crack in the table in a con-
tinual yellow shower. If the sheet,
when spread upon the pink page, shows
a flaw, a bit of leaf picked on
the end of a little stick is put over the
hole and patted down in an instant. If
a sheet tears in being lifted out of the
skins, one Of the ragged edges blown
away is laid over it at the edge that is
torn off, and a little rub with the end of
a stick Yields the two pieces together;
then a breath blows the free edge of the
added piece off of the main sheet, and
the whole is spread out as fiat and fair
as though it had never been mended.
When the little pink book is full it is
put away to be done up in delicate wrap
pers and sold to sign painters and deco
rators who want gold leaf. Back in the
dark recesses OF the basement men are
beating out the thin sheets, so delicate
that a breath whisks them all about,
from Jumps of virgin gold. The women
work at the foot of the steps because the
best light is there, and they need it
most. The idea that he is nus afford
ing a good many people daily free les
sons on the gold beater's art does not
worry the owner of the shop.