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One of the primary features of Canyon Creek Presbyterian’s new church complex on North Star Road in Richardson, is a gilded 10 x 20 foot cross which towers 130 feet in the air above the new sanctuary. The cross was manufactured with steel and was designed by the architect, James E. Langford, Architects and Planners, LLC, as architectural art, a finial point of glowing gold which flows down in lines of steel, clearly marking this place as a house of God. The cross was actually gilded on the construction site by Robert Marshall, a skilled fine art conservator who is a Preservation Texas Award Winner for Historic Restoration, using techniques basically perfected and unchanged by craftsmen since the Middle Ages.
The gold was then pushed onto the adhesive with soft European squirrel hair brushes and the overlapping gold "flags" were "skewed" off by pulling the brush back and forth over the surface until the flags broke off. The gold was smoothed out even more by using a natural sea sponge softened with warm water. There is no other finish on top of the gold. When properly applied, the nearly pure gold can last untarnished in extreme outdoor conditions for decades. Any finish applied on top of the gold would degrade much faster than the gold itself.
The craftsman, Robert Marshall, has many years experience in the art of historic restoration, preservation and conservation of architectural monuments. He has worked at Versailles, the Place due la Concorde, the Louvre, the Smithsonian, SMU, Rice University, and the Naval Academy at Annapolis to name a few. He was awarded the Preservation Texas Award in 1999 and 2002 for his work on the Tower Building at Fair Park. Robert’s skill was discovered while he was working his way through college as a historic car mechanic. In the process of integrating his knowledge of material science with his skill in restoring historic vehicles, he was noticed by the Conservation Analytical Laboratory of the Smithsonian in Washington DC and thus his focus in life was forever changed. Robert’s skills are not limited to the gilding process – he is an art conservator and artist who works in a variety of mediums, producing paintings, murals and sculptures in addition to his work on architectural elements. He lives on a ranch in Cameron, Texas just outside of Austin. |
The
basic cross itself was fabricated and welded off-site, then delivered
to the construction site and set on scaffolding (see photo insert).
Once the craftsman was ready to begin the gilding process, the
scaffolding was draped to prevent the wind from blowing the delicate
gold leaf away. At this point, the steel of the cross was prepared
and coated with a very durable epoxy base coat of yellow ochre.
Next, the craftsman applied a special adhesive for gold from France,
the same adhesive used on famous landmarks of Paris and our own
Statue of Liberty.
The
gold used in this process was 23.75 kt gold. This gold is not
a paint but is hammered from a solid square bar of 98.99% pure
gold. The gold is hammered and rolled, then cut into 87mm square
sheets, each sheet being a mere one tenth the thickness of a human
hair. The gold leaf is packaged in books, each leaf is separated
by a sheet of very fine tissue of paper that has been treated
with red rouge, a fine red clay powder, to keep the gold from
sticking together. 3,500 of these little gold square leaves were
carefully applied to the cross with a slight over lap of approximately
1/4 inch. 
Once
the gilding was complete and completely dry, it was time to set
the cross in place. The temperature was looming around 100 degrees
on Tuesday afternoon, July 29, 2003, when rumor spread through
the Canyon Creek Presbyterian offices on Campbell Road that the
gold cross was going to be erected on the new Sanctuary within
the hour. Anticipation had been building since the steel cross
had been delivered to the construction site and the excitement
was palpable as staff and members alike rushed to the scene. Interested
spectators had shown up early to take pictures, only to be discouraged
by the heat and an apparent delay in the supporting welding operation.
Forty-five minutes later, two massive construction cranes hoisted
the twenty-foot, gilded cross 130 feet in the air, maneuvered
it, and at 4:02 pm, set it in place. What a glorious moment it
was for the small group weathering the Texas heat to watch as
God’s presence became manifested in their new neighborhood
in such a majestic manner!
