45 
September, 19 21 
MAKING 
PLASTER COUNT 
M O R 
/ 
E 
The Revived Art of Colored Plaster Decoration Promises to Enliven 
Our Flat and Uninteresting Walls 
COSTEN FITZ-GIBBON 
A PLASTER wall surface in a room 
is potentially like a blank sheet of 
paper. It gives us almost unlimited 
opportunity to execute upon it what we 
will. A stone wall, a wall paneled in 
wood, a tiled wall, each in its own way 
bears the fixed limitations of its particu¬ 
lar material and texture beyond which it 
is not susceptible of modification. But a 
plaster wall, by its very plasticity and the 
ease with which one can regulate its ap¬ 
pearance at will, invites the exercise of 
imaginative ingenuity. 
Just because the plaster wall is such a 
common everyday feature in our houses, 
nine hundred and ninety-nine people out 
of a thousand are quite content to take it 
as a matter of course, leave it wholly to the 
mercy of the paper-hanger or the painter, 
and ignore the manifold possibilities of 
making it a thing of especial interest. 
Low-Relief Decorations 
First, the plain white or one-hued wall 
may be adorned with low-relief decorations 
in a contrasting color. 
One of the illustrations 
shows the hall of the Villa 
Lazzara-Pisani, at Stra, 
with decorations of this 
sort in a very sane and 
conservative Rococo man¬ 
ner, executed about 1740, 
when the house was done 
over according to the pre¬ 
vailing fashion of the day. 
The ground of both walls 
and ceiling is perfectly 
plain white plaster, while 
the low-relief tendrils, 
leaves and scrolls, all deli¬ 
cately modeled, are of a 
fresh but mellow and un¬ 
obtrusive green. Both de¬ 
sign and execution are sim¬ 
ple but tremendously ef¬ 
fective, and one gets the 
impression of being in a 
light and airy bower. The 
whole composition is play¬ 
ful, refreshing, and emi¬ 
nently suitable for a coun¬ 
try house. 
This example supplies a 
very wholesome lesson in 
the use of combined color 
and relief. We are so 
habitually timid about 
color that when the ele¬ 
ment of relief is added to 
be dealt with at the same 
time, we are apt either to 
bungle the opportunity 
The dining-room 
the New York home 
of F. F. Rosen has 
been decorated in the 
modern style of col¬ 
ored plaster work. 
The walls are deep 
ivory 
% 
through halting diffidence or else lose our 
heads and overshoot the mark with rash 
excess. Plenty of low-relief plaster orna¬ 
ment there is, but in its naked, lifeless 
white state it too often has just about as 
much value as the icing on a birthday cake, 
which it frequently resembles. It could be 
vastly improved by accenting it with gild¬ 
ing, or parcel-gilding—thus were the plas¬ 
ter reliefs on the ceilings of Mount Ver¬ 
non originally embellished—but how often 
is this done? And when too much color 
is applied without due discrimination, the 
resulting frenzied kaleidoscope effect de¬ 
stroys all the values of the relief, and the 
eye fails to appreciate the gradations of 
light and shadow which the varied planes 
and modeling of the relief ought to convey. 
It is in just this respect that the exam¬ 
ple under review deserves close attention. 
The color is flat and all the shading pro¬ 
ceeds from the graceful modeling of the 
relief, which is not at all obscured as it 
would be to some extent by reflected lights 
if the reliefs had been left pure white. The 
plaster in which these reliefs are executed is 
nothing but the old stucco 
duro of the Romans, the 
recipe for which is given 
in the footnote.* 
Relief of shadow and 
contour is given the 
wall by molded plast¬ 
er capitals and the 
woodwork. The 
woodwork is green 
and the parrots in 
darker green 
The mantel is surrounded by swags of molded fruit painted in bright colors harmon¬ 
izing with the colors of the birds. The wall is heavily enameled. Caro Delvaille did 
the decorations and Herbert R. Mainzer was the architect 
A Different Scheme 
In a small room adjoin¬ 
ing the hall of this same 
house, the ground of the 
wall is a light lavender- 
mauve, while the little spots 
of plaster relief, patterned 
in the “Chinese taste,” are 
a deeper tone of the same 
color. The ground of the 
panel above the door is of 
the deeper tone, while the 
relief upon it is in the color 
of the wall outside the 
panel. In the adjacent din¬ 
ing-room the plaster re¬ 
liefs (upon a white wall) 
are in four colors, all flat 
and soft in quality, and the 
reliefs are brought forward 
sufficiently at several points 
to form consoles. This 
method of decoration per¬ 
mits both relief and color 
to play their proper parts. 
The reliefs may be in one 
color or more, and the wall 
white or some soft color. 
Of course, in England 
in the 18th Century, a cer¬ 
tain amount of Rococo 
(Continued on page 76) 
