Stucco

“ I can still see the blue glimmer of the flowers in the grass; the low house, with deep wings, where the stucco was peeling from the red brick beneath a delicate tracery of Virginia creeper; the seven pyramidal cedars guarding the hooded roof of gray shingles; and the clear afterglow in which the little moon sailed like a ship. Fifteen years ago! And I have not forgotten so much as the spiral pattern the Virginia creeper made on the pinkish white of the wall.
“Are there no trees,” I asked, “except cedars?” The driver lifted his whip and pointed over the roof. “You never saw such elms. ”

“ Below the great consolidated cliff, well on to where the city of stucco sat most architecturally perched, with the rumbling beach and the rising tide and the freshening stars in front and above, the safe sense of the whole place yet prevailed in lamps and seats and flagged walks, hovering also overhead in the close neighbourhood of a great replete community about to assist anew at the removal of dish-covers. ”

“ The principal varieties of stucco are common, rough, trowelled and bastard. Cement has largely superseded lime for this work. Common stucco for external work is usually composed of one part hydraulic lime and three parts sand. The wall should be sufficiently rough to form a key and well wetted to prevent the moisture being absorbed from the plaster.
Rough stucco is used to imitate stonework. It is worked with a hand float covered with rough felt, which forms a sand surface on the plaster Lines are ruled before the stuff is set to represent the joints of stonework. ”

“ The rock-walls are prepared by being covered with a thin skin of lime stucco, and lime or chalk is mixed in small quantities with all the colours; hence the restriction to “earth pigments,” made necessary by the dampness of these subterranean chambers. The process employed was in fact a kind of fresco, though the stucco ground was not applied in small patches only sufficient for the day’s work; the dampness of the rock was enough to keep the stucco skin moist, and so allow the necessary infiltration of colour from the surface. ”

“ In summer apartments and in exedrae where there is no smoke nor soot to hurt them, they should be made in relief. It is always the case that stucco, in the pride of its dazzling white, gathers smoke not only from its own house but also from others.
5. Having finished the mouldings, apply a very rough rendering coat to the walls, and afterwards, when the rendering coat gets pretty dry, spread upon it the layers of sand mortar, exactly adjusted in length to rule and line, in height to the plummet, and at the angles to the square. The stucco will thus present a faultless appearance for paintings. ”

“ He cured the cellar walls of rickets, the roof of baldness, and the inside woodwork of tetter; and he so wrought with hammer and saw and nails, with lime and cement, with paintbrush and putty knife, that presently what had been a most disreputable blot on the landscape became not only a livable little house but an exceedingly picturesque one, what with its wide overhanging gables, its cocky little front veranda, and its new complexion of roughcast stucco. ”

“ In these old books the stucco has long since crumbled away, and we read what was sculptured in the granite. They are rude and massive in their proportions, rather than smooth and delicate in their finish. ”

“ Hence, stucco that is properly made does not get rough as time goes on, nor lose its colours when it is wiped off, unless they have been laid on with little care and after it is dry. So, when the stucco on walls is made as described above, it will have strength and brilliancy, and an excellence that will last to a great age. But when only one coat of sand mortar and one of fine marble have been spread on, its thin layer is easily cracked from want of strength, and from its lack of thickness it will not take on the brilliance, due to polishing, which it ought to have. ”

“ Fresh pitsand, however, in spite of all its excellence in concrete structures, is not equally useful in stucco, the richness of which, when the lime and straw are mixed with such sand, will cause it to crack as it dries on account of the great strength of the mixture. ”

“ Having spoken of the method by which stucco work should be done in dry situations, I shall next explain how the polished finish is to be accomplished in places that are damp, in such a way that it can last without defects. First, in apartments which are level with the ground, apply a rendering coat of mortar, mixed with burnt brick instead of sand, to a height of about three feet above the floor, and then lay on the stucco so that those portions of it may not be injured by the dampness. ”

“ The part in our yard was entirely ruined, but in that of the señora it appeared that its vast sides had been covered from one end to the other with colossal ornaments in stucco, most of which had fallen, but among the fragments is the gigantic head represented in the plate opposite. It is seven feet eight inches in height and seven feet in width. The ground-work is of projecting stones, which are covered with stucco. A stone one foot six inches long protrudes from the chin, intended, perhaps, for burning copal on, as a sort of altar. ”

“ The high relief and the abundance of the stucco, which hems in the pictures on all sides and in places even overlaps their edges, make a unique and inspiring effect, in which the balance of the two arts would have been disturbed if Rosso had not scattered among the stuccos little cartouches of painting and placed grounds of gold behind them charged with paintings in varied colours. ”

“ If it were distinctly felt by the eye to be stucco, there could be no question about the matter, it would be decidedly disagreeable; but all the parts to which the eye is attracted are executed in marble, and the stucco merely forms the dead flat of the building, not a single wreath of ornament being formed of it. ”

“ Sgraffito.—This is a variety of stucco work used chiefly in Italy from the 16th century downwards, and employed only for exteriors of buildings, especially the palaces of Tuscany and northern Italy. The wall is covered with a coat of stucco made black by an admixture of charcoal; over this a second thin coat of white stucco is laid. When it is all hard the design is produced by cutting and scratching away the white skin, so as to show the black under-coat. Thus the drawing appears in black on a white ground. ”

“ All the buildings are in ruins, all are raised more or less on stone platforms above the ground level, and all show traces of having been covered with stucco, both internally and externally. In some cases this stucco is very beautifully decorated in colored devices, as in the mound already described at Santa Rita; [36] in others the stucco is molded in various designs and ornaments, which may or may not be colored, as in the mound at Pueblo Nuevo on the Rio Nuevo, presently to be described. ”

“ I regret that my sketch is not sufficiently minute to show a favourite habit of the Moors of Granada and Seville, in the technical working of their stucco, by the use of which they give an appearance of extraordinary elaboration to their decorations. It consists in working different patterns on different planes of the same piece of stucco-work. At a distance the dominant lines of the pattern only are apparent, on a nearer approach the pattern comes into sight which fills up the bold openings left between the dominant lines of the top pattern ”

“ These reliefs in stucco represent cupids, chimeras, dolphins, does pursued by lions, etc. The red walls are adorned with closets, perhaps intended for the linen of the bathers, over which jutted a cornice supported by Atlases or Telamons in baked clay covered with stucco. A pretty border frame formed of arabesques separates the cornice from the vault. A large window at the extremity flanked by two figures in stucco lighted up the tepidarium, while subterranean conduits and a large brazier of bronze retained for it that lukewarm (tepida) temperature which gave it the peculiar name. ”

“ The tracing out and noting of a string of beads in a grave may often occupy an hour or two hours, keeping the face close to the ground so as to blew the dust away exactly, without disturbing the beads.
Stucco.
Stucco on wood we have already noticed, under the preservation of wood. However firm the stucco may seem at first, the gradual contraction of the wood will make it fall away; but when once saturated with paraffin wax, this movement is stopped, and the stucco is held on to the basis.
Stucco on mud bricks is a difficult material to preserve. ”

“ Besides this, that work has been adorned with friezes full [Pg 102] of stucco-work, with many figures large and small, and with devices and other ornaments of various kinds, and under the niches and in the partitions of the vaulting have been made many and various designs in stucco and many beautiful inventions in carving; all which things have enriched the work in such a manner, that it has changed its form and has gained not a little in beauty and grace. ”

“ They were of brick, but the fronts had a stucco facing cut into imitation of ashlar, and weathered to the sombrest grey. The windows of the ground floor and of that above, and the fanlights above the doors, were boarded up, a guard against unlicensed intrusion; the top story had not been thought to stand in need of this protection, and a few panes were broken. On these dead frontages could be traced the marks of climbing plants, which once hung their leaves about each doorway; dry fragments of the old stem still adhered to the stucco. ”

“ Stone-panelling has the merit of solidity, and the outlines of massive stone mouldings are strong and dignified; but the same effect may be produced in stucco, a material as well suited to the purpose as stone, save for its greater fragility. Wood-panelling is adapted to the most delicate carving, greater sharpness of edge and clearness of undercutting being obtainable than in stucco: though this qualification applies only to the moulded stucco ornaments used from economy, not to those modelled by hand. ”

“ But if the stucco is an improvement on the carving, and especially if there88 is colour, it must be preserved. This is best done by fixing it with thin tapioca water, just so thick that it will soak into the stone without leaving any glair when dry. This treatment also does for limestone with a rotten face.
The same tapioca water may be used for fixing colours on stucco, as I did on the Tell el Amarna pavement (Fig. 48) ; and the thickness must be graduated to the porosity, so that it will just soak entirely into the material. Any film left on the face will peel away. ”

“ When at work they squat on the floor, wifli a hod full of stucco before them, and a sort of small baking-board at their feet. On this board, with their fingers and a trowel, they model flower after flower — stems, foliage, fruit and all — besides birds of one or two kinds ; passing the portions, as they complete them, up to a workman, whose business it is to group the bits together, and fix them in position. No moulds are used, no wooden pattern of any sort, — all is done with the unaided hand and eye. ”

“ The hieroglyphics doubtless tell its history. The stucco is of admirable consistency, and hard as stone. It was painted, and in different places about it we discovered the remains of red, blue, yellow, black, and white. The piers which are still standing contained other figures of the same general character, but which, unfortunately, are more mutilated, and from the declivity of the terrace it was difficult to set up the camera lucida in such a position as to draw them. The piers which are fallen were no doubt enriched with the same ornaments. ”

“ When the stucco stands, as it does pretty well in London, the appearance is better than that of the naked bricks however, and by far the greater portion of the towns of Europe are stuccoed, though usually on stone. It is only in Italy that one sees much true magnificence, and even there stucco is quite common. The best hotels of Paris, however, are of hewn stone. ”

“ One is to work in stucco alone: another to make only the ornaments 247of stucco and paint groups in the spaces thus formed and grotesques on the friezes: the third to make the figures partly in stucco, and partly painted in black and white so as to imitate cameos and other stones. ”

“ But if he desire the work to have bolder relief in projection, in the spot where this is to come he fixes iron supports or nails or other armatures of a similar kind which hold the stucco suspended in the air, and by these means the stucco sets firmly, as one sees in the ancient edifices where the stucco and the iron supports are found still preserved to the present day. ”

“ After the whole wall has been smeared with the mud, nail rows of reeds to it by means of "fly-nails," then spread on the mud a second time, and, if the first rows have been nailed with the shafts transverse, nail on a second set with the shafts vertical, and then, as above described, spread on the sand mortar, the marble, and the whole mass of stucco. Thus, the double series of reeds with their shafts crossing on the walls will prevent any chipping or cracking from taking place. ”

“ When the last rosebush is in, including some that Will is gloomily certain will never grow, I think I shall go away for a rest to some place where there is only cactus and sage and sand.
J—— arrived on the scene in time to save the day, and the garden is very lovely. Next year it will be worth going a long way to see, for in this part of the world planting things is like playing with Japanese water flowers. A wall of gray stucco gently curves along the canyon side, while a high lattice on the other shows [Pg 46] dim outlines of the hills beyond. ”