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Among the various types of wall decorations used in the Western world during the 16th to 18th centuries, gilt leather belonged to the most fashionable and costly ones. Despite its appearance, it is not real gold that creates the golden shine, but typically a silver leaf which is coated with an orange-brown lacquer to obtain the characteristic golden lustre. Due to its fragile character, only a fraction of the gilt leathers have survived in situ or in museum collections. Even though some of these gilt leathers are hanging in prominent locations, it is both nationally and internationally an overlooked part of our cultural heritage. Conservation work on gilt leather is a real challenge due to the complex nature of the material, historical craft-led conservation practices and the lack of systematic analytical research of degradation processes. This white paper presents an overview of the current state of the art in gilt leather research and conservation, and identifies future research directions. It is the result of a cross-disciplinary collaborative research project on gilt leather started in 2015. As part of this an international group of experts in gilt leather met at a Symposium in Maastricht, The Netherlands (March 2016). One of the outcomes of this meeting, covering the topics of art history, conservation, material dynamics and diagnostics, was a research agenda for gilt leather 2017-2025. The results for the different NIACS themes are presented below.

E-books --- Cuir --- Restauration des oeuvres d'art --- Conservation --- Protection du patrimoine