THE HOUSE AND ITS EQUIPMENT. 



TREATMENT OF BEAMS. 



shows the craftsman balancing on a 

 knife-edge. One little touch in the 

 wrong direction and he produces sham 

 wood-carving ; but kept within bounds, 

 compo ornament is first cousin once 

 removed to gesso. 



Before considering the plaster- 

 work that is being done at the present 

 day it is well thus to glance backwards 

 and review the history and development 

 of the art. We are then in a better 

 position to gauge the quality and 

 adjudge the value of modern work 

 manship and design. In the revival of 

 a moribund craft the instinct of the 

 enthusiastic workman usually carries 

 him straight to the finest period of its 

 historic development. Perhaps this may 

 not always be so, but it is true of the 

 revival of modern plaster-work as 

 evidenced by the beautiful ceiling 



All these show to the full the freedom seen in seventeenth 

 of being done without wild striving and effort, and are 

 Of the four the ceiling at Wvch Cross Place brings with 



IO. IN 



ADAM STYLE. 



designs shown in Figs. 5, 6, 7 and .S. 



century work. They have the same air 



based on, but not copied from, the earl} work. 



it more suggestion 



of having adopted 



f e a t u r e s from 



Elizabethan times. 



At this point we 



enter controversial 



grounds how far 



is it proper to copy 



and reproduce ? 



There is no ques- 



t i o n about the 



little frieze of a 



hunting scene 



being modern 



the modelling and 



shape of the dogs 



proclaim it (Fig. 7). 



But when we come to the ceiling designed in the Adam style, where stands our craftsman ? This is 



a twentieth century revival of an eighteenth century rendering of Roman plaster-work. It could 



quite easily be a mere rearrangement of the ornaments made from the actual eighteenth 



century moulds, some of which still exist, and in any case can easily be reproduced from existing examples 



of the plaster - work. The rooms so 

 decorated may be extremely pleasant, 

 and probably are so, but the work 

 cannot altogether escape the charge of 

 being stage architecture. The fiction, 

 if skilfully executed, may well be so 

 complete that only the radiators and 

 sanitary adjuncts 

 deception created. 



This aspect of the modern practice 

 in the plasterers workshops gives cause 

 for serious thought. It arises from a 

 position so universally taken up by the 

 people who build, and is so often tacitly 

 accepted by the designer or the archi- 



give away the 



II. MODERN VARIANT OF GEORGIAN. 



tect, as to be difficult to combat. It is 



