00:00:00
and that's why that mask becomes so
00:00:02
powerful and so
00:00:04
revealing it embodies that desperate
00:00:07
desire of Augustus to enter the pantheon
00:00:10
of the great gods and the great Kings
00:00:13
but the truth is underneath that glowing
00:00:16
mask he wasn't Rich enough and wasn't
00:00:19
powerful enough to be one of them and
00:00:21
that's why this mask is made of copper
00:00:24
with a little bit of gold put on the top
00:00:26
of it
00:00:30
augustus's vision of unlimited gold had
00:00:33
failed to
00:00:35
materialize but in a little over a
00:00:38
hundred years the alchemist's dream
00:00:41
would come
00:00:43
true and this miraculous Discovery took
00:00:49
place in
00:00:52
[Music]
00:00:54
Birmingham now in the 19th century
00:00:57
Birmingham was Far and Away the most
00:01:00
inventive place on the planet now let me
00:01:05
just give you one example in that period
00:01:07
this city registered three times as many
00:01:11
patterns as any other city in the world
00:01:15
indeed it seemed that hardly a day would
00:01:17
pass here without someone inventing
00:01:20
something but for me one of those
00:01:23
inventions was more remarkable than all
00:01:26
the others because For the First Time it
00:01:28
promised to bring gold Bo within the
00:01:31
reach of
00:01:37
everyone that remarkable invention was
00:01:40
the brainchild of one George Richards
00:01:46
elkington George elkington was a typical
00:01:50
product of industrial Birmingham he was
00:01:53
inventive he was industrious and he was
00:01:56
obsessed with taking out patents he
00:02:00
patented virtually everything he ever
00:02:02
produced the bifocal for instance but
00:02:05
elkington's most profitable license was
00:02:08
issued on the 25th of March
00:02:11
1840 when he patented away to make gold
00:02:15
objects out of almost
00:02:17
[Music]
00:02:22
nothing years before Edison had even
00:02:24
invented the electric light bulb
00:02:27
elkington was harnessing Electric
00:02:30
to make gold
00:02:36
objects he called the process electr
00:02:40
plating and it was a Marvel of the
00:02:43
Industrial
00:02:46
Age now at the center of elkington's
00:02:50
factory stood a huge machine that
00:02:54
rotated 500 times a minute 24 hours a
00:02:57
day 7 days a week and around that
00:03:00
machine were these vast troughs of
00:03:03
bubbling brown liquid and those troughs
00:03:07
transformed ordinary objects in to
00:03:11
gold now contemporaries were astounded
00:03:15
by the process some of them thought it
00:03:18
was magic some of them thought it was
00:03:20
Alchemy some thought it was some
00:03:22
technology from a distant future but
00:03:25
nearly all of them thought it was a
00:03:27
miracle
00:03:32
one day in
00:03:34
1844 elkington was graced with a visit
00:03:37
from Prince Albert who had come to see
00:03:41
the miracle for
00:03:44
himself and for this special occasion
00:03:47
elkington had prepared a most wondrous
00:03:52
spectacle elkington plucked a small rose
00:03:58
from his lapel
00:04:01
he then delicately lowered it into one
00:04:04
of his troughs of
00:04:07
liquid he waited the crowd waited and
00:04:12
when the time was just right he withdrew
00:04:18
it the crowd was amazed a round of
00:04:21
applause broke out because elkington's
00:04:24
Rose had been turned to
00:04:27
gold and as they looked Clos
00:04:30
they grew even more amazed because by
00:04:32
chance a small cobweb had been on
00:04:35
elkington's
00:04:37
rows and the cobweb 2 had been turned
00:04:41
into the finest threads of
00:04:47
[Music]
00:04:49
gold Albert was
00:04:52
captivated so
00:04:54
captivated that he became an
00:04:56
electroplating addict
00:05:01
on his return to London it is said that
00:05:04
he had his very own electroplating Suite
00:05:07
installed at Buckingham
00:05:09
Palace finally fulfilling every ruler's
00:05:12
dream of unlimited
00:05:15
[Music]
00:05:21
gold with a royal seal of approval
00:05:25
elkington's Factory went into overdrive
00:05:31
within a few years he was employing
00:05:34
10,000
00:05:37
people and his gold was sent across the
00:05:40
world to India to Uruguay and even to
00:05:46
Egypt elkington was churning out gold
00:05:49
objects on a scale never seen
00:05:56
before why why do you think people like
00:06:00
so much CH that's exactly what they're
00:06:04
likeing because if everything was made
00:06:06
out of solid metal it would cost a
00:06:08
fortune where this will look like it's
00:06:11
made out of solid gold it's really
00:06:13
[Music]
00:06:18
nice that there is gold that's what the
00:06:22
actual gold looks
00:06:25
like yeah that that's actually gold I
00:06:28
don't know how they make it like I'm not
00:06:29
going to pretend to know but that there
00:06:32
would
00:06:33
do hundreds and hundreds of items of
00:06:35
work just that small
00:06:38
amount and then comes out that it's
00:06:42
gold it's a really thin
00:06:45
amount you wouldn't be able to buy a a
00:06:47
pack of cigarettes with the amount of
00:06:49
gold that's on
00:06:51
there because that's just a color it's a
00:06:54
gold color so people buy it for the what
00:06:57
it looks like more than what the value
00:06:59
of the gold
00:07:04
[Music]
00:07:05
is he think he real
00:07:09
gold I think a lot of people would be
00:07:11
fooled yeah a lot of people would fools
00:07:17
[Music]
00:07:22
gold elkington's Fool's
00:07:25
Gold have the Victorian public Enchanted
00:07:31
they peered into elkington's glittering
00:07:34
showrooms from
00:07:36
Newcastle to London's fashionable region
00:07:40
[Music]
00:07:42
street but the public didn't just look
00:07:45
they could now own a little bit of gold
00:07:48
for the very first
00:07:54
time this was the most revolutionary
00:07:57
technology and what it did was
00:07:59
democratized gold it brought gold into
00:08:02
ordinary people's
00:08:08
homes and elkington's ingenious new
00:08:11
technology allowed him to make perfect
00:08:14
copies of the most priceless and
00:08:16
exquisite Treasures ever to have been
00:08:21
found and these are based on really
00:08:24
extraordinary original an object
00:08:27
discovered in Afghanistan and elkington
00:08:30
made numerous numerous reproductions of
00:08:34
them now what's amazing is this probably
00:08:37
served some incredibly important
00:08:38
religious function thousands of years
00:08:40
ago but now it was simply for display
00:08:43
perhaps you could even use it as a
00:08:45
toothbrush
00:08:46
[Music]
00:08:48
holder as his electr plating Empire
00:08:51
expanded one city was hooked on
00:08:54
elkington's Golden Wares
00:09:02
the dawn of the 20th century was
00:09:05
Vienna's Gilded
00:09:10
Age even as the Austrian Empire crumbled
00:09:14
their Lust For Gold
00:09:17
remained but here there lived an artist
00:09:21
who was determined to make gold sacred
00:09:25
once again
00:09:33
Gustav climp produced a series of
00:09:35
glittering
00:09:37
paintings but one of them shines
00:09:40
brighter than all the
00:09:44
rest the
00:09:47
kiss known as the last word on
00:09:52
love but I think it tells us just as
00:09:55
much about
00:09:57
gold Clint has thrown almost every
00:10:00
single kind of golden substance he can
00:10:02
find onto this one canvas in fact there
00:10:07
are eight different kinds of gold leaf
00:10:10
alone on this picture and there many
00:10:11
more different kinds of gold paint and
00:10:14
every single thing has been applied in a
00:10:16
different way so he has put some gold
00:10:19
leaf down flat other times he's put gold
00:10:22
on top of bits of plaster and shellac to
00:10:25
create these wonderful Jewel likee
00:10:26
textures so the whole thing becomes
00:10:28
incredibly opulent it's almost like
00:10:30
you're opening a bag of jewels and
00:10:33
you're looking inside to see all these
00:10:34
fantastic Treasures
00:10:37
within he's looked back to the great
00:10:39
Egyptian sun
00:10:41
Gods the great Byzantine mosaics he had
00:10:45
been to Reena he' seen those fantastic
00:10:49
mosaics he's drawing on decorative gold
00:10:52
workk of the Renaissance like
00:10:53
[Music]
00:10:57
Chini so why is climp doing it why so
00:11:01
much gold in so many ways with so many
00:11:04
references and meanings well I think
00:11:06
it's part of his desperate attempt to
00:11:09
bring back gold from the brink because
00:11:11
he has lived through a period when gold
00:11:13
has become debased it has become cheap
00:11:15
it's become tacky and he's trying to say
00:11:17
no gold is the most precious thing we
00:11:19
have it's the most numinous spiritual
00:11:22
otherworldly thing we have and therefore
00:11:24
we have to devote it to the most
00:11:25
important things in the world and for
00:11:28
Clint the most important thing was
00:11:37
love it was a beautiful idea but today
00:11:41
Clint's Grand ambition has been undone
00:11:44
by the popularity of his
00:11:46
work endlessly reproduced the kiss has
00:11:50
become just another golden idol of our
00:11:52
consumer
00:11:55
Century now most of us can have a little
00:11:57
bit of gold in our lives
00:12:00
and our obsession with it remains
00:12:06
undimmed you know I think the reason
00:12:09
that we're so obsessed with gold is that
00:12:12
gold reflects the things that every
00:12:14
society holds most sacred so for the
00:12:17
ancient Egyptians it was the sun and the
00:12:20
afterlife for the Christians it was the
00:12:22
light of
00:12:24
God and for the Renaissance Kings it was
00:12:26
power and status and for Gustav climp it
00:12:28
was love love and sex but this gold here
00:12:33
underneath the bank of England suggests
00:12:35
that for us perhaps the most sacred
00:12:38
thing is
00:12:41
money and you know when this beautiful
00:12:44
substance is locked away seen only as a
00:12:47
number as a price as a statistic on a
00:12:50
spreadsheet I can't help feeling that
00:12:52
maybe something is
00:12:54
lost and maybe somehow gold has lost its
00:12:58
shine
00:12:59
[Music]
00:13:10
in the next
00:13:11
episode a color from across the
00:13:15
seas from Joto's Heavenly Visions to
00:13:19
tian's sensual Delights this is an utter
00:13:24
Barn
00:13:25
stor from Picasso's Melancholy yearning
00:13:29
to Eve Klein's dreams of
00:13:32
Escape it's the color of the great
00:13:36
beyond of the forever unattainable we
00:13:39
were going to show those dirty commies
00:13:41
that we were better it's the story of
00:13:52
Blue putting a grand Scottish home to
00:13:54
wrs here on BBC HD tonight at halfast 10
00:13:58
and that's after the culture show next
00:14:03
[Music]
00:14:06
[Laughter]
00:14:09
[Music]
00:14:10
[Applause]
