The surface of the Dresden ornament pieces is coloured or silver- or gold-laminated. To this day, collectors are not quite sure how this metallic sheen came to be applied to the cardboard. In this context, I would like to refer to an essay by Christina Nehrkorn-Stege: Vom Schmuck der Engel. Technologische Untersuchungen im Museum für Sächsische Volkskunst (2017)[ii]. She had a laboratory analysis carried out of embossed decorative trims made of cardboard, sometimes referred to by collectors as Dresden ornaments. She concluded from the analysis that the metal overlay on the forms was possible in three ways. Firstly, with a wafer-thin metal leaf overlay, secondly by means of bronze powder and thirdly by applying galvanically produced metal layers.

Let us first turn to possibilities one and two. In the 19th century, bronze powder (consisting of copper and zinc) was popular as a substitute for metal leaf. The bronze powder was almost exclusively applied with the help of liquid or powdery primers and processed with the hot-pressure method. While bronze was used initially, over time producers used more gold leaf. One reason for this was that bronze printing almost always showed a duller, less shiny metallic tone, whereas gold leaf had a full, pure metallic shine. The term 'gold leaf' is somewhat irritating. At the time, gold leaf was used to describe all gold-coloured leaf metals used for printing or embossing. Completely pure gold was never used, it was always faux alloys. The 'gold' always contained other metals, often copper, zinc and silver. Depending on the ratio of the mixture, the colour shade could be adjusted. The more common silver-laminated pieces also never used real silver leaf, as it was too unstable and could easily oxidise. Zinc foils or aluminium leaf were more practical. The great advantage was that they did not tarnish and retained the silver tone. The best metallic shine was achieved with heated presses.[iii] In this process, the board to be embossed was coated or powdered with a suitable binder, then the selected metal was applied.[iv] The pressure of the heated plates caused the binder to melt and the gold or silver coloured overlays to adhere. As the process was done under strong pressure, the metal was polished at the same time as it stuck to the molten binder. The purity and lustre of the metal depended largely on the choice of binder, the strength of the pressure and the correct heat of the embossing plates[v].

The third way of achieving a metallic shine was with electroplated metal papers. Here, with the help of electricity from a metal solution (at that time mostly nickel), the metal was applied in a thin layer to the polished side of a brass plate. A sheet of paper with an adhesive was then placed on top of this layer. After drying, the paper, which was firmly bonded to the metal coating, was peeled off the brass plate. The gloss of the metal paper thus obtained corresponded exactly to the gloss of the brass plate. Depending on whether this brass plate was prepared with a high, medium, or matt gloss, the paper also took on the respective degree of gloss.[vi] The paper could then be embossed.

With the silver and gold laminated pieces, it was found that the surfaces have no unevenness, as would have been the case in a subsequent application process. This means that the desired metal coating was already applied to the cardboard before the embossing process. For the manufacturers of the Dresdner ornament, producing these metal papers themselves would probably have been too costly. They had the necessary metal papers supplied for this purpose. There were special companies for this, such as the Nuremberg gold and silver paper factory Max Buchstein or M. Brünn & Co, both in the Bavarian town of Fürth, which had such prefabricated papers in their range. The Bavarian town of Fürth was the centre of this industry at the end of the 19th century. Between 1850 and 1950, around 150 companies existed here that produced various types of paper in the form of imitation gold, silver, and other metals.