Patina on gold?

**Melanie** · 17-10-2013, 10:48 PM

Hello

I wondered if anyone could enlighten me as to how I can apply a dark colouring to gold...? I only really have experience (if you can call it that!) with silver and use platinol or LOS but have just started having the odd thing gold plated and wondered what I could use to get a similar effect in recessed areas (handprints and the like) Did my usual googling but could only find a very short post about using iodine to stain gold... would this be right?

Any guidance much appreciated as always

Ta!

**Dennis** · 18-10-2013, 08:17 PM

Hi Melanie,

Gold will not patinate as such, although, low carat gold such as 9ct will take on a slightly darker look with l.o.s or Platinol. So the patination which you might see on antique pieces is basically due to accumulated dirt.

You could experiment with colouring the recesses with a black waterproof pen and then rubbing back the excess with a silver polishing cloth, or a cloth sparingly moistened with meths. However my guess is that the result will not be convincing.

Also interesting is to solder small gold decorations, or melt gold solder, onto silver. When you patinate this, you will get gold on black. My experiments below shows 18ct gold solder melted into shallow cups made in silver with a burr. Regards Dennis.