This beauty just left me to go to the clockmakers. It came in looking very sad and dirty, now it's returned to its original finish. It's Swedish and I really like the way the Swedes mixed gold leaf with other materials. The carved griffins are painted to look like metal and they're really well done. I've had a few people in the studio who haven't believed me when I've told them it's a paint effect. It looks so real as the gilder used a metal powder in the paint. I love looking at that kind of work, it's so instructive to see how gilders achieved the look of metal in the past. The curling tails are completely new as they had been broken off at some point. A. J. Brett carved them http://www.ajbrett.co.uk/ and they did a fantastic job.
