Copyright (c) 2013 Mathew Jenkins
Characteristically English is the free floral design, as in the wagon-vaulted gallery at Burton Agnes, which has now fallen into ruins, but a drawing by Richardson preserves the record of a scrolling design of exceptional vigour. In the room at Speke the ceiling area is crossed by large main beams, encased in plaster, and enriched with a running state room from the old Palace, Bromley-by-Bow, Balcarres House in Scotland, and elsewhere. In the Bromley-by-Bow ceiling the centers of six quatrefoils are occupied by medallions bearing the helmeted head and bust of Joshua, Hector of Troy, and Alexander.
The devices on the end of the gallery at Little Moreton Hall, representing the Wheel of Fortune, appear in the Castle of Knowledge, printed by Reynold Wolfe, 1556 At Blickling (1619-20) the gallery ceiling has in the large panels emblematic figures, such as Dolus, of which some appear in Peacham's Minerva Britannia; and in a ceiling in an old house in Gravel Lane, Houndsditch, now demolished, the panels are enriched with moral and religious emblems.
Pendants of various sizes were developed from the conical bosses which served to cover the mitreing of the intersecting ribs, a joint always difficult to the inexpert; and were employed also for their value in enriching and breaking up the surface of the ceiling, especially in the case of monotonous and low-relief strapwork, as in the fish room, Audley End. Certain pendants are in skeleton form, plastered upon an iron core, as in the great chamber at Herringstone, in Dorset.
Plaster was treated with colour and gilding during the Tudor Period, and continued to be coloured in the ensuing period. At Boughton Malherbe the drawing-room, showed a complete colour decoration in the ceiling presumed to be one of the most beautiful specimens of embellishment in the kingdom, the ground is white, and the interlaced pattern blue and reddish brown, judiciously intermingled. The prevalence of colouring is evidenced by the statute of the first years of James I's reign, in which it is enacted that "no plasterer shall exercise the art of a painter in the city or suburbs or lay any colour or painting whatsoever, unless he be a servant or apprentice to a painter, or have served seven years' apprenticeship to that trade."
The undercoating of ceilings enriched with modelled plaster contains an amount of cob and clay bound by brown hair ; and on this is applied ornamental details and a coating of plaster probably compounded in the following manner: Lumps of lime were slaked with water, and "as the lime slacked more water was added and the face of the heap smoothed over: as the heat increased this face cracked, but was again and again smoothed over keeping the heat in until the slacking process was completed." This slaked lime was kept at least twelve or eighteen months before use, and was then mixed with silver or light-coloured sand and plenty of white hair.
----------------------------------------------------
Mathew Jenkins works with the Woodcarvers Guild preserving the history & finesse of period furnitre and architectural fittings. Would you like to have your own piece of captured history whether it be wall panelling, four poster beds, Ceiling panelling, etc? Go to for more information and for a free ebook.
http://period-house.org/
EasyPublish this article: http://submityourarticle.com/articles/easypublish.php?art_id=307424
No comments:
Post a Comment