Gilder plies trade at uppermost level

BOISE – Michael Kobold gets high at his job nearly every day of the week, and officials say the entire state will soon be grateful for it.

Kobold, 53, is the Boise artisan who’s worked since June 1 perched 208 feet atop the Idaho State Capitol, where he’s meticulously gilding the statue of an eagle perched on the Statehouse dome.

“No, heights don’t bother me,” Kobold told the Idaho Statesman newspaper. “I used to work at an oil refinery. They called me the monkey because I was the one who climbed to the top of the big towers.”

The $11,000 project to give the 67-inch-tall eagle a covering of gold leaf is part of the restoration of the Capitol, built in 1912. Kobold has worked six days a week since June, as well as a couple hours every Sunday, and expects to be finished with the makeover of the eagle he nicknamed “Oscar” within another week.

“It’s going to look a lot different,” he said. “Before, I didn’t even know it was an eagle up there. It was just this little brown thing. Now people will look up and say, ‘Wow, that’s a gold eagle up there.’ “

One of about 500 members of a national society of gilders, Kobold spent a year at the Chicago Art Institute learning the delicate process of applying tissue-thin sheets of gold leaf to objects. Much of his time atop the Statehouse has been spent stripping multiple layers of paint applied over the past century: gold, yellow, copper, bronze, gold again and bronze again.

After a month and a half of stripping the paint, Kobold had to prime and seal the statue, then apply sizing to bond the gold leaf to the bird. Since the sizing takes 10 hours to dry and is workable for another 10 hours, Kobold does small sections of the eagle at a time.

“One of our goals was the long-term protection gilding provides, but it’s also going to be more noticeable,” said Katie Butler, project manager for the restoration.

Kobold said he’s proud to have been part of the project but looks forward to the day when he won’t have to climb 299 steps and a 40-foot ladder just to go to work. And having a restroom nearby.

“There’s no bathroom up there, so you just have to hold it,” he said. “I quit drinking coffee when I started this job.”