Japanese gold leaf artists worked on a nanoscale: X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy is a non-destructive way to date artwork

Wednesday, July 2, 2014 - 20:01 in Physics & Chemistry

Ancient Japanese gold leaf artists were truly masters of their craft. An analysis of six ancient Namban paper screens show that these artifacts are gilded with gold leaf that was hand-beaten to the nanometer scale. Researchers believe that the X-ray fluorescence technique they used in the analysis could also be used to date other artworks without causing any damage to them.

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