Sneak peek inside the tarp covering the Royal Thai Pavilion at Olbrich Gardens (2024)

Clara Delgado’s work can be tedious, but it requires meticulous care.

Four-inch squares of gold leaf are fragile and pricey, and they can easily float away on an unexpected breeze.

That’s why the Spaniard works behind a massive tarp that for nearly a year has shrouded the Royal Thai Pavilion from the elements at Olbrich Botanical Gardens on Madison’s East Side.

Only now it’s summer. And even though a few windows have been cut into the gray and blue covering to allow a little airflow, the working conditions for Delgado and her fellow artisans are becoming, shall we say, a bit more sticky.

This is a first for Delgado in her 30 years of specializing in the application of gold leaf. She has worked on Spanish royal castles in Madrid and other historic structures around the world but never a building from Thailand or in Wisconsin. But patience, regardless of locale or a building’s design, is essential.

“It’s tricky, it’s tedious, but you get used to it,” Delgado said Wednesday through an interpreter. “It’s the beauty of it and the majesty of it when something is done and how it looks.”

Delgado works for Kalam, a company that specializes in the rehabilitation, restoration and preservation of historic buildings. Madison has hired Kalam for a $1.6 million conservation project that started in August 2023 and is scheduled to wrap up sometime this fall. The first phase involved removing the Thai-made clay roof tiles that had begun to crack, break and fall. They were replaced during more than seven months of work with identical-looking tiles made in Valencia, Spain, that were baked longer and at a higher temperature so that they won’t absorb water. At the same time, lead coverings of the eves and peaks of the pavilion also were repaired and replaced.

The second phase, which began in March, involves cleaning, painting and applying decorative gold leaf, and repairing and replacing glass beads and tiles that add to the elegance of the pavilion. The project is being funded by UW-Madison, which was gifted the pavilion more than 20 years ago. The restoration will allow the pavilion to continue to shine on the east side of the botanical gardens.

“It’s a long process but I think it’s actually going really well and they’re making progress,” said Tanya Zastrow, Olbrich’s executive director. “It’s literally getting brighter every single time you come here. It’s just getting brighter and brighter and brighter.”

Gift from Thailand

The pavilion arrived in Wisconsin in 2001 as a gift to UW-Madison from the government of Thailand and the Thai chapter of the Wisconsin Alumni Association as a gesture of international friendship. Constructed in Thailand and flown to the U.S. in sections, the pavilion was assembled by Thai artisans who were on one of the last planes to land in Chicago after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Made from plantation-grown teak without the use of nails or screws, it took three weeks to put together with community members. Mourning the lives lost on Sept. 11, they signed the backs of several hundred of the 18,000 clay tiles with messages of hope and peace. Some of those tiles have been preserved, while hundreds of people signed the backs of the new Spanish tiles that are now on the pavilion’s roof.

But at the start of the gifting process, UW-Madison officials thought, according to blueprints, that the pavilion would be just 10 feet square. When they went to Thailand to see the gift, it turned out to be a 30-foot-tall, 40-foot-long and 20-foot-wide wooden structure. That’s when the university abandoned plans to have it rebuilt along Willow Creek near what is now the Bakke Recreation & Wellbeing Center and, instead, worked with city officials to place it on the east side of Starkweather Creek in Olbrich Botanical Gardens, according to Kim Santiago, who was director of International Alumni Relations when the pavilion was gifted.

She makes a point of coming to the pavilion as often as possible and pays a visit on every Sept. 11.

“It just made the gift all that more special,” said Santiago, who wore the same hard hat on Wednesday that she had in 2001. “It’s a jewel.”

The city and Kalam have the blessing of the Thai government for the changes to the tiles and the restoration work. Personnel from the Thai consulate and the Royal Thai Embassy visited the pavilion in October, and the president of the Thai chapter of the UW Alumni Association visited last June.

Painstaking detail

About 60% of the gold leaf work had been completed while much of the glass bead and glass mosaic work remained. Like the gold leaf process, the mosaic work also will take patience and attention to detail, with many of the hand-cut pieces about the size of a dime. Some pieces are even smaller.

Stacey Keller, of Insite Consulting Architects, a firm overseeing the pavilion project for the city, said her company has done gold leaf work in the State Capitol and local churches but never a Thai pavilion. Gold leaf can help coat the wood to keep it intact while at the same time adding to the beauty of the structure.

“This is a really prominent building in our community, and it means so much for the international community,” Keller said during a tour. “We are working at the Capitol right now that has some gold leaf projects, but it’s a little more understated at the Capitol, you really don’t see it prominent. This is obviously prominent.”

But for now, the pavilion and the work being done remains shielded from the 340,000 annual visitors who wander the winding stone paths of the 16-acre gardens.

On Wednesday morning, Delgado was perched on yellow scaffolding on the southeast side of the pavilion, where she sometimes contorted her body in order to reach spots to press sheets of gold leaf onto wood edges just below the bottom of the roof. The 23.75 karat gold leaf comes in four-inch-square sheets in packs of 25 in what resembles a packet of Post-It-Notes but without the sticky strip on the back. They come in boxes that each hold 20 packs, with each box costing between $1,200 and $1,500, depending on the brand, according to Ruben Garcia, the manager of the pavilion project for Kalam.

“They’re very, very light. If you’re breathing, they can just blow away,” Garcia said. “It’s a very expensive material. You need to be careful. You need to know what you’re doing.”

Barry Adams covers regional news for the Wisconsin State Journal. Send him ideas for On Wisconsin at 608-252-6148 or by email at badams@madison.com.