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• Contents
• Introduction
• I - Materials and their Uses
• II - Plasterers in the Royal Works
• III - Plasterers' Company
• IV - From timber to plaster
• V - The London Evidence
• VI - Transmission and Diffusion
• VII - The Impact of Inigo Jones
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• Gazetteer of Plasterers - Introduction
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Contents

DECORATIVE PLASTERWORK IN CITY, COURT AND COUNTRY,

1530-1640

Dr Claire Gapper

• CHAPTER I - Materials and their Uses
  • Terminology
    • What did ‘ceiling’ mean?
    • ‘Pargetting’ and ‘plastering’
  • The documentary evidence
  • Lime and gypsum plasters
    • I Lime plaster
      • Raw materials
      • Production of lime plaster
      • Aggregates
      • (i) Sand and clay
      • (ii) Hair
      • Decorative lime plaster without hair
      • (iii) Loam
    • II Gypsum plaster and plaster of Paris
      • Raw materials – alabaster - stone plaster
      • Stone Plaster
      • Production of gypsum plaster
      • Storage
      • Transport
      • Grey and white plasters
  • How lime and gypsum plasters were used
    • Equipment
    • Laths
    • A documentary case-study: St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, 1539
    • ‘Shooting’ floors
    • Making ceilings and interior walls – lime or gypsum or both?
    • Plasters and status
    • Mixing lime and gypsum
    • Analysis of plaster samples: the case of Acton Court
    • Limitations of chemical analysis
    • Roughcast
    • Plasterers’ routine tasks in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
  • Colouring plain plasterwork
    • Limewash
    • Whitewash and distemper
    • Pigments
    • Size
    • Whiting
    • Limewash or whitewash?
    • White oil paint
    • The whiteness of plaster of Paris
    • Other colours
    • Plasterers and painters
    • Tincturing heraldry
    • Plasterers and bricklayers
    • ‘Pencilling’
    • The decoration of Conduit Court, Greenwich, 1582-83
    • ‘Moulding’ and ‘purfling’
    • Black
  • The origins of decorative plasterwork in England
    • ‘Stucco’ before Nonsuch
    • Nicholas Bellin’s work for Henry VIII
    • Uses of lime plaster in royal palaces after Henry VIII
    • ‘Fretwork’
    • Decorative plasterwork – white or coloured?

• CHAPTER II - Plasterers in the Royal Works
  • The workforce
  • Working practices
    • Impressment
    • Hours of work and overtime
    • Patterns of employment
    • Rates of pay
    • Task-work
  • The Royal Master Plasterers
    • Patrick Kellie (1555-67)
    • Thomas Kellie (1567-85)
    • John Symonds (1585-97) and John Allen
    • Richard Dungan (1597-1609)
    • James Leigh (1610-25)
    • Richard Talbott (1625-27)

• CHAPTER III -The Plasterers’ Company of the City of London
  • Freedom of the City of London
    • ‘Foreigners’ and ‘aliens’
    • City jurisdiction
  • Plasterers’ Company records; City of London records
    • The role and governance of the Plasterers’ Company: (i) the charter; (ii) the coat-of-arms; (iii) the Ordinances
    • Apprenticeship: Geographical origins of apprentices in the London Plasterers’ Company, 1597-1662.
    • Freedom by patrimony; Freedom after apprenticeship
    • Journeymanship; Yeomanry; Livery; The Wardens and Master; Court of Assistants
    • The Custom of London and Company members who were not plasterers
    • Freedom by redemption
    • Size of the Plasterers’ Company; Growth of the Plasterers’ Company
    • Social networks within the Plasterers’ Company
    • Control of the number of plasterers in London; Size of workshops
    • Trade secrets and trade disputes: ‘Foreign’ plasterers
  • Relations with other building trades
    • (i) Carpenters
    • (ii) Bricklayers and Tylers
    • (iii) Painter-Stainers
    • (iv) Joiners
  • Standards of workmanship
    • Work Quest Book
    • Four plasterers engaged on decorative work 1655-60
  • Patronage
    • The posts of City Plasterer and Bridgehouse Plasterer
    • Job opportunities for plasterers in the City
    • Social advancement
      • The example of Abraham Stanyon
      • Wealth accumulation by plasterers ... or the lack of it

• CHAPTER IV - From timber to plaster: courtly ceilings in the sixteenth century
  • Introduction
  • Early developments in ‘ceiling’
    • Timber ceilings
    • Timber and plaster ceilings
    • Early decorative plaster ribs and bosses
    • Plane plaster surfaces
    • Hexagonal rib designs
    • Eight-pointed stars
  • Decorated timber ribs
  • Ceilings for Henry VIII
    • Bosses and pendants
    • Serlian designs
    • White or coloured ceilings in the Royal Works?
  • Courtly ceilings in the 1530s and 1540s
  • Nonsuch Palace
  • Absence of artistic training for English plasterers
  • Royal ceilings after Henry VIII
  • Aristocratic and courtier patronage of decorative plasterwork, 1547-84
    • Longleat
    • Copt Hall
    • Charterhouse
    • New Hall
    • Sheffield Manor Lodge
    • Ormond Castle
    • Burghley House
    • Theobalds
    • Chatsworth
    • King’s Manor
    • Helmsley Castle
    • Brooke House
  • Summary
    • Rib designs – pendants and bosses - strapwork – heraldry – flora
    • Friezes and moulds
    • Burgeoning skills of plasterers
    • Overmantels
    • Sculptural modelling and mason/sculptors
  • Elizabeth I as patron of plasterwork - enriched ribs
    • Enriched ribs – technique and sources
    • Royal patronage and the fashion for enriched ribs
    • Enriched ribs in courtier houses
  • Conclusion

• CHAPTER V -The London Evidence
  • Introduction
  • Decorative plasterwork for institutions
    • Livery Company Halls
    • Charterhouse
    • Ecclesiastical examples
  • Characteristics of Elizabethan and Jacobean plasterwork in London
    • The sample
    • Flat ceilings and exposed beams
    • Ceiling ribs and status
    • Flat ribs
    • Rib designs
      • (i) Ceiling designs derived from native medieval traditions
      • (ii) Serlio or not?
      • (iii) New fashions – increasing elaboration
      • (iv) Inspiration for change - a new Royal Master Plasterer
        • Knole and Hatfield
      • (v) Strapwork
      • (vi) Influence of courtier houses in the early seventeenth century
        • Audley End
    • Bosses and pendants
    • Additional decoration
      • (i) Heraldry
      • (ii) Floral motifs
      • (iii) ‘Grotesques’
      • (iv) Medallion heads
  • Hand-modelled plasterwork
    • The small body of hand-modelled work in London
      • (i) Records of demolished work
      • (ii) Surviving examples of figurative work
      • (iii) Iconography
        • Biblical
        • Personifications
        • Mythological
        • Emblems
        • Grotesques
      • (iv) Engraved sources and their ownership
    • Plasterers of modelled work – James Avis, William Blackshaw
  • Conclusion

• Chapter VI - Transmission and Diffusion
• Plasterers documented working outside London
• The repetitive use of moulds and ‘local schools’ of plasterwork
  • Limits of the methodology - the ‘Middlesex Jacobean Plasterer’?
  • Production of moulds in London
  • Small cast ornament on strapwork and flat ribs
• Design sources for moulds
• Attributions to a single plasterer
  • 'Identical' ceilings
  • Ceilings connected by rib design and several motifs
• London-style plasterwork outside London
  • Oxfordshire and Kent
    • Broughton Castle, Lynsted Park, Mapledurham House
  • South Midlands
    • Mapledurham House and Hardwick Court, Oxon
    • Dorton Court & Canons Ashby, Northants, and Manor Farm, Cotton End, Bedfordshire
• Surviving plasterwork by documented London plasterers
  • Richard Dungan, Knole and Lullingstone Castle, Kent
  • James Leigh and a change of style in London
  • The plasterwork of Edward Stanyon and the dominant style of the 1620s
• Conclusion

• CHAPTER VII - The Impact of Inigo Jones
  • Introduction
  • Inigo Jones’s experience of plaster in Italy
  • Jones’s approach to interior decoration and designs for ceilings
  • Jonesian ceilings in timber or paint, rather than plaster
  • London plasterers in the 1620s
    • William Willingham
    • Joseph Kinsman at Goldsmiths’ Hall, Ham House and the Royal Works
  • The spread of Jones’s influence: ‘transitional’ ceilings in London
  • Conclusion