Goldbeater

Origin

From , equivalent to .

Full definition of goldbeater

Noun

1. A craftsman who creates gold leaf by hammering gold bars.
• 2004, Paul Fattaruso , Travel in the Mouth of the Wolf , Zebedee went to the goldbeaters shop, which smelled like lamb because the goldbeater ate a sandwich of lamb every day for lunch.
• 2015 , Ed Regis , Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology, The membrane had been used, perhaps since antiquity, to make gold leaf, which goldbeaters produced by starting out with a small ingot of gold and beating it thinner, then sandwiching the leaves between sheets of cow intestines, ultimately creating a stack of alternating goldbeater's skins and gold leaf that could be more than 100 layers deep.
• 2017, Laura Morelli , The Painter's Apprentice: A Novel of 16th-Century Venice, In my mind's eye, I see Cristiano on the day he first arrived in my father's workshop, the old goldbeater's assistant now grown into a man.

Derived terms

• goldbeater's skin