Since time immemorial, gold has served as a kind of monetary unit, it was considered a sign of wealth and prosperity. Today it not only has not lost its popularity, but has become even more widespread - now it is used in mechanical engineering, and in cosmetology, and even in cooking.
There are many types of gold - black and white, yellow and red, there is even blue gold. But the most interesting and even mysterious thing is gold leaf. It looks like the thinnest plates, and their thickness is much less than the thickness of a human hair, and can be yellow, orange, white, red or even greenish.
For the first time, gold of this type was produced in the Chinese province of Long Tang, at the beginning of the first millennium. In Russia it received the name "susal", which in translation from the Old Russian language means "face", that is, the first, most important, representing an object. Initially in Russia, it was used to decorate household utensils, gilding ornaments, and only high-ranking persons or very wealthy people had such items.
How and from what gold leaf is made
It is no secret that gold itself is a very soft and malleable metal, therefore, like other types of gold, leaf is produced with additives. It can include zinc, silver, copper, cadmium, nickel, or palladium. The color of the resulting material depends on the additive. The combination of gold with the additional metal occurs by imposing the thinnest plates and rolling them through a press or by processing them in high-temperature furnaces.
And if modern technologies make it possible to create gold leaf using electronic lathes and machines, then at the beginning of the development of its production, the process was very laborious and complex. Gold leaf was produced only in a few small factories, thin sheets were created by hammer-makers, in workshops similar to forges, and it took several days to make one sheet. Now the process takes no more than 10 hours, and production is controlled remotely.
Where and what is gold leaf used for
Initially, gold of this type was used for jewelry and gilding of icons, but with the increase in its production with the help of modern technologies, the scope of its application also expanded.
In addition to gilding jewelry and increasing the lifespan and conductivity of various electrical and electronic parts, it is even used in cooking. For example, in India expensive sweets are wrapped with gold leaf, in many other countries it is used as a food additive with the E175 code, and in the countries of Central Europe in prestigious restaurants you can find alcoholic beverages with gold leaf flakes. In high-end restaurants in Japan, it is considered chic to drink the so-called gilded coffee, which is also made with gold leaf.
In addition to cooking, mechanical engineering and jewelry, gold leaf is widely used in cosmetology, both in carrying out various procedures and creating decorative products.
