Gilding on parchment, leather, and other materials with which one makes tapestries and edges of books: take three pounds of linseed oil, varnish, Greek pitch, a pound of each; half an ounce of saffron powder: boil all of this in a leaden pot, until when dipping a feather, it is burned upon removal; then you remove your mixture from over the fire, and you take a pound of hepatic aloe, good and well pulverized, and throw it little by little inside, watching to stir it with a stick, because otherwise the mixture would boil over: if it rises in spite of the movement, you remove it from the fire, and let it sit; then put it back, let it boil again, always stirring it with the stick. Once all this is well incorporated, you remove it from the fire, let it sit, then pass it through a rag into another vessel, in which you keep it. When you want to use it to gild parchment or leather, you first give a base of egg white or gum [arabic]; you next apply a sheet of tin or silver; you coat on top your hot varnish, and you will have soon enough a very beautiful color, which you let dry in the sun: after which, you print or paint the colors which please you.

Manner of gilding the edge of books. To gild the edge of books, take a nut-sized amount of Armenic bole, a pea-sized amount of candy sugar, grind everything together well while dry; add to them a little well-beaten egg white; next grind again. This done, take the book which you want to edge-gild, which is bound, glued, plowed, and burnished; tighten it firmly in the lying press, as square and even as possible; with a brush, give it a coat of beaten egg white, which must be slight, let it dry, give it a coat of the above-mentioned composition, dampen the edge with a bit of clear water with the brush, then on the field apply the leaves of gold or silver: when they are dry, you can burnish them with the hound’s tooth. This done, you can work on top, whatever work, marbling, etc., which you like.