Agios Nektarios – Gold printing with sandblasting – Mount Athos

Description

Sandblasted gilding with Saint Nektarios.

An amazing gold print with Saint Nektarios.

Saint Nektarios or Nektarios of Pentapolis or Nektarios of Aegina was a popular hierarch and shepherd. In 1904 he founded a women’s Monastery in Aegina, of which he personally took over the management, when he retired there in 1908 after resigning from the Rizario School. The inhabitants of Aegina considered him a Saint even before his sleep, which was mainly attributed to two events. 
Saint Nektarios initially cured a demon-possessed youth, while later villagers visited him asking him to pray to God to rain on the island, because there had been a prolonged drought for almost three years. Indeed, it worked with all the islanders present and on the same day it started to rain. His grace and fame constantly grew, as a result of which the monastery within four years grew so much, reaching 15 nuns from the first four. Forty years after his sleep, he was declared a Saint, on April 20, 1961, as his miracles were evaluated, as well as his great pastoral and ecclesiastical work.

Gold Sandblasting: Features

In the icon with the representation of Jesus Christ, the hagiographer monk used the technique of gold printing, creating a work of unique beauty.
Gold printing is a type of thermotype technique. Thermography is the name of the method by which very thin metallic gold foil is placed on surfaces such as wood, leather, cardboard, plastic by pressing a heated embossed plate (cliché) onto our surface. Around the image you also use the sandblasting technique, it is the technical processing by which the corrosion of a part or the whole of a surface is achieved by throwing sand under pressure.