Japanese gold leaf artists worked on a nanoscale

Ancient Japanese gold leaf artists were truly masters of their craft. An analysis of six ancient Namban paper screens show that these artifacts are gilded with gold leaf that was hand-beaten to the nanometer scale. Study leader Sofia Pessanha of the Atomic Physics Center of the University of Lisbon in Portugal believes that the X-ray fluorescence technique her team used in the analysis could also be used to date other artworks without causing any damage to them.