There are many of you reading this who will already be familiar with Richard Walker from Watergild Studios. To date, he has taught well over 500 students the craft of Gilding. Certainly helping to keep gilding off the endangered crafts list – thank you Richard!
We fondly call him our Gilding Guru because there is very little that he doesn’t know about gilding and he is always on hand to help out with any technical queries that we can’t fathom.
As well as being on hand to offer technical support, Richard also offers his expertise in helping us to run the very successful Kolner gilding Workshops. We are the UK distributor for the high-end Kolner range of gilding products and Richard has become our UK specialist, having visited the factory in Germany and familiarised himself with the products, technical team and gilders who use the products frequently. We have been unable to run these workshops during Covid but we have plans to restart them in the Spring/Summer of this year – watch this space!
Richard lives near the historical City of Portsmouth and his gilding studio is situated in Havant, an hour train ride from London. It is from here that he either completes his gilding commissions for clients or is found busy teaching students how to gild. There is no age limit to learning how to gild and Richard has taught children as young as Primary school age and his oldest students have been in their 80s! It is a passion and a way of life for him and he is dedicated to sharing his skills and keeping this beautiful craft alive. Richard has an abundance of funny stories to tell about his experiences as an educator and he makes learning great fun.
As well as teaching personal, introductory and advanced classes from his studio, Richard is also the gilding teacher for full-time furniture students at the Internationally recognised West Dean College of Arts and Conservation near Chichester and the Chippendale International School of furniture near Edinburgh. Whether you wish to learn to gild for pleasure, start a new hobby, create a side hustle or start a fully-fledged business you will be in the best possible hands.
The Watergild Studios website https://watergild.com/ is a fantastic resource for gilders of all levels and an in-depth, very detailed gilding book by Richard is near completion. We literally can’t wait to share this with you and it is something that will add so much to the gilding industry. Alongside this, Richard will be working on putting together some online teaching resources so there are lots of options available to give you the right guidance no matter what level of experience you are.
We don’t know how Richard fits it all in but he also travels widely working on prestigious gilding projects, offering a complete service for any professional gilding requirements with the ability to conduct a full range of gilding services nationally or worldwide.
Gold Leaf Supplies and Watergild Studios have worked closely for many years now and we are thrilled to have our Gilding Guru in our shiny world.
If anyone fancies learning the art of gilding please get in touch with Richard
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