Gold Leaf

Today I had an appointment at Addenbrookes hospital, but we arrived rather early, so we decided to go into town and have lunch there before returning to the hospital. After lunch looking out of the window of the bus I saw a chap doing something strange with the finial on a gate pillar. Looking more closely I realised that he was appling gold leaf to a very carefully finished finial; something very rare to see these days. Thinking this would be a good addition to the work theme that I have recently been using, I was lucky enough to get three quick pictures of him working, as our bus went past, travelling in the slow moving traffic. Nowadays people generally tend to use gold Hammerite metallic paint rather than the very expensive gold leaf, so I would think that this is quite a rare picture to obtain; the gold leaf can be seen in the workman’s left hand as he admires his work.