The Art of Nanjing Gold Leaf Crafting

The ancient craft of gold leaf making in Nanjing traces its origins to the Longtan Garden area of Qixia District, once part of the neighboring Jurong and Jiangning counties. Legend honors Ge Hong, an Eastern Jin dynasty alchemist also known as the Immortal Ge, as the founding master.

The process is documented as early as the Ming dynasty in Song Yingxing’s The Exploitation of the Works of Nature: “To make gold leaf, the metal is first flattened, then wrapped in black paper and struck repeatedly with a hammer.” Nanjing gold leaf is produced from pure gold through more than a dozen stages—including smelting, rolling, cutting, and the most demanding step, the beating. Two craftsmen sit facing each other, swinging heavy hammers thousands of times to transform a small gold lump into a sheet barely 0.1 microns thick. Tradition says a single liang of gold can yield enough leaf to cover over an acre. Modern measurement confirms its incredible thinness: 943 sheets stacked measure just one millimeter, and 10,000 sheets weigh only about 178 grams.

Today, Nanjing gold leaf graces both sacred and prestigious spaces worldwide—from temples across China to the Grand Palace in Thailand, the archways of Osaka, and presidential residences afar. It also finds application in culinary arts, cosmetics, architecture, and fine crafts, a testament to its enduring versatility and beauty.