Tressers Gesso Recipe

[brose]

I have run across several places that mention Tressers gesso as a great modernized gesso recipe. Unfortunately, Jerry Tresser passed away in Nov. 2022 and it is no longer available. As a trained bench chemist I have the itch to attempt to reproduce this since it is no longer available. Does anyone know if Jerry Tressers gesso recipe is known or is a secret that left with him?
I am just starting my gold leaf gilding adventure and will start playing around with Kolner Instacoll this week.

[Erica McPhee]

Oh my goodness, I did not know that Jerry passed away. So sad. 

I have some of his gesso but I don’t know about the recipe. This might be a good question for the Cyberscribes group on Facebook.

[brose]

I have tracked down Jerry Tressers modern recipe that replaces lead carbonate with titanium dioxide on CyberScribes in a couple of posts with an addendum. I am happy it seems this recipe is not lost.

Since it is no longer available for purchase, if anyone is interested in trying some of my Tressers TiO₂ gesso let me know. I also sort of want to know if the recipe behaves the same as the stuff he sold. I am quite new to gilding and I don't really have much of a hands on reference. Jerry Tresser noted that the titanium dioxide recipe needs to be kept in liquid form, as it does not reconstitute well from a solid.

I am currently testing it to see how it turns out on paper.

[Erica McPhee]

Thank you very much for doing the research and letting us know. Good luck with it and we look forward to seeing how it turns out.