Its as I said Jean:- there are various types of gilding. Battara obviously means the type of gilding that is applied to wood, where gold leaf is used, or fire gilding to metal which can also leave a heavy deposit. Have a look at the little gold birds on that pendok I posted a pic of to another current thread:- those birds are fire gilding.
The type of gilding that we find on old pendoks is usually pretty thin. Even when it is electro plate on an old pendok, it will be thin and soft and very subject to wear. They cannot do hard gold plating, or hard silver plating in Jawa, as far as I am aware. The gold plate on your bathroom taps is very hard and does not wear much at all. Then again, sometimes gold and silver plate will be sprayed with a protective lacquer.
There are a lot of processes that we call "gilding" in English, that in Jawa have other names, usually "sepuh mas" for gold to metal and "prada" for gold to wood. There are other names used also in Jawa, but I forget them, because you might only hear that word once in five years.
There is a lot of variation in plating, its not all equal.
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