“Afterward, several coats of gesso are applied. The gesso is left in the double boiler—don’t forget to stir it—and is always applied warm.” There is a tiny gas burner in one corner of the studio. “Then the coatof gesso is left to dry overnight. And then there is recarving, which is a painstaking process where all the sculpted details that got lost with layers of gesso are recarved to achieve the desired profile.” He gestures to the dizzying array of chisels, veiners, gouges, planers, and bobs that are laid out on the primary worktable. Part of Maëlle’s job is to keep the precious tools cleaned and oiled and sharpened.
“In a big factory such as this one, if a worker is good at carving, that may be his only job, as it requires a lot of skill. Or, of course, if Monsieur Bayol is available, he likes to add his special flourishes at this point. The outside, or ‘romance’ side, of the animal is always the most ornately decorated.”
Maëlle listens with care, but more than this, she watches Léon. The way his jaw moves as he speaks, the dark whiskers that shadow his cheeks. The way he impatiently pushes his white shirtsleeves up to his elbows, displaying hard, muscular forearms, the bones and sinew undulating as he applies the tools to the wood.
She leans in to catch a whiff of his scent: paint and fresh-sawn wood, but also something entirely his. He smells like the fennel that used to grow wild in the fields outside her hometown.
Maëlle has spent much of her life around men, dreaming with her brother, working with her father, interacting with her neighbors. But this is different. When she was young, Maëlle often wished she were a boy. She longed to run and fish and hunt, to carve and create like her father. She had never cared for cooking and sewing—much less cleaning—like her sisters and mother. But when Maëlle declared she would never marry, her mother told her she would change her tune when she fell in love. Maëlle had disagreed at the time, but now she wonders: Is this that feeling? The elusive sensations never roused by the butcher’s son, or the widower farmer, or any of the other boys from town in their striped sweaters who stank of fish guts and brine from their time at sea?
All Maëlle knows is that for the first time in her life she finds it hard to concentrate on learning a new skill. Her heated gaze skips overLéon’s hands, his arms... his mouth. She loses track of what he is saying, imagining the feel of those lips touching hers.
After the recarving, Léon and Maëlle stand back as Monsieur Bayol comes to inspect the piece. He picks up a sharp veiner—a tool like an ice pick—to add a few details, makinghmmmsounds as he studies the depth and detail of the carving. Then he nods and moves on.
Léon glances at Maëlle and smiles. In a conspiratorial whisper, he murmurs: “When I first started working here, I would have given my right arm for a nod like that. Monsieur Bayol is a great man, a great artist.”
Maëlle understands. It is like striving to please her father, but... more so.
“Now, the final coat of gesso must be sanded again.”
“Again?”
“There is never enough sanding,” he says with a smile, taking her hand in his. He guides her palm to the figure, brushing her fingertips over the swoops and swirls of the horse’s mane.
“You feel how smooth it is? Like velvet.”
She is speechless; her skin burns where he touches her.
“Now, we apply three or four coats of a soft clay—in this case, we will use yellow bole. Do you see the consistency?”
The bole looks more like a creamy mud than paint. Léon applies it with a long-handled, soft-haired brush that reaches into the deepest indentations of the crevices, the nooks, the cavities.
“Then more sanding and we apply one coat of red bole on the areas of highest relief. A final sanding and only then are we ready for the gold.”
They wait until most of the heavy work has finished and the workers are heading home for the day; then Léon tells Maëlle to shut all the windows.
“The gold leaf is tissue-thin, you see? The slightest breeze will blow it. We always cut it on a special cushion.”
The precious gilt gleams in the late afternoon light, wafting in air currents no one else feels.
“The glue, called size, is made of water and melted gelatin. It is applied with this special brush, made of goat hair.” Léon shows her the flat, broad brush, wrapped with a copper ferrule, and sets the horse on an incline to keep the glue from puddling. “We work in small sections so the size doesn’t dry.”
He places the loose leaf on the cushion and cuts it into sections with a sharp knife.
“Never, ever, touch the gold. The slightest oil from your fingers will mar it. To lift it, use the gilder’s tip, like this.” He shows her the “tip,” a short-handled brush made of fine, long strands of sable. “But you can run the hairs along your cheek for a tiny bit of adhesion. You see?”
He lifts the soft bristles to her face, runs them along the apple of her cheek. It feels like he is rubbing a newborn kitten along her skin. The breath leaves her body in awhoosh.
“Feel how soft?”
Maëlle can only nod.
The gold leaf is so delicate that it clings to the brush, and Léon brings the gilt to the carved surface, glistening with glue.
“You must be very precise; overlapped areas will not burnish the same as a single layer, and we must not waste the precious metal. Afterward, we use a small dry mop, which has a soft, domed tip, made of squirrel hair. The round shape reaches the deepest profiles. Tamp the leaf down on the surface to be sure the metal leaf adheres fully. The goal is for it never to ‘sink’ into the glue, but for the metal to sit on top so it can gleam properly.”
“What of the spots you’ve missed?”
“For touch-ups, we use a pointed gilder’s brush. And now, this will be your job: to burnish the gold to a high sheen with an agate burnisher.”
