A few years ago the pages of Devon Life were graced by some eye-catching plasterwork. It was in a review of The Goring, a prestigious hotel in London. I looked closely at the pictures and there, in the heart of Belgravia, I spotted something that has its roots firmly in Devon: the marvellous stucco plasterwork of Geoffrey Preston.
In a tucked-away workshop at the end of a winding lane that threads through farmland outside the village of Ide, I meet Geoffrey and his partner and colleague, Jenny Lawrence. It is a remote spot, quite understated from the outside, but stepping through the door I find myself in that rarefied zone where art and architecture collide.
We start with a history lesson as Geoffrey explains the architectural significance of stucco through the centuries.
‘The Romans learnt about it from the Persians,’ he says. ‘It was used for Buddhist sculpture in Afghanistan, Hindu sculpture in India, and early Renaissance sculpture in Western Europe. In Britain lime mortars were used in the Tudor period for decorative ceilings, but stucco arrived with the Italian-Swiss sculptors from the Ticino region who had been brought over by architects to work on buildings like St Martin in the Fields. It reached its full glory in the UK in the 17th and 18th centuries.’
Geoffrey explains that the fashion for all this grandeur started to wane during the later 18th century, as new materials and techniques superseded the relatively expensive stucco. By the 20th century the heritage skills of creating stucco had disappeared.
So, what exactly is it? Looking at the creations that adorn the studio I am struck by the organic, natural-looking precision of the fruit, flowers and leaves in Geoffrey’s creations, the lines are fluid, with plasterwork ‘fabric’ draping in illusorily soft folds. All are subjects that lend themselves to being formed in stucco – a luxuriously decorative form of plaster sculpting formed from a mixture of lime putty, gypsum and, in Geoffrey’s projects, marble dust, which adds great strength and durability. These ingredients are mixed to a putty then modelled directly onto a ceiling or wall. Because stucco sets in just a few hours the modellers must work swiftly and precisely, with a definite plan, building up areas of high-relief ornamentation with exquisite and unique detail – all before the putty dries.
I marvel at a huge, detached wing that sits, rather surreally, in the middle of the studio. This, Geoffrey tells me, was probably the zaniest piece he’s ever made – a flying unicorn weighing 24 stone commissioned to hang in the stairwell of a Mayfair nightclub. ‘The wings were too big to get through the front door so we had to make them detachable – this is a prototype for those wings!’
Looking around, it’s clear that the heritage craft, ‘lost’ for almost 100 years, has been thoroughly rediscovered. The story behind this resurrection starts with the devastating fire at the National Trust’s Uppark, in Sussex in 1989. For Geoffrey, an accomplished stonemason and carver, who’d studied sculpture at Hornsey College of Art, the inferno led to something of an epiphany.
At the time he was working as the founding director of one of the UK’s most respected conservation companies, and the trust came to them for help. The fire had left an appalling mess, not least the destruction of five of Uppark’s stucco ceilings in its state rooms. Geoffrey and his team of eight modellers rose to the challenge, working to reconstruct the incredibly ornate and intricate ceilings and incorporating hundreds of original fragments, salvaged from the wreckage, into the new stucco. It sounds mindboggling, but so harmonious was their success that when they’d finished, 14 months after starting, even a skilled eye couldn’t tell which part of the ceilings were original and which were newly modelled.
‘After Uppark I worked on the restoration of Prior Park in Bath which had also suffered a fire in the early nineties,’ he says.
With stucco reborn in the UK, their work became increasingly sought after – not just for repairing damage but also for those wanting to create statement interiors. Geoffrey says his chief aim on any of the projects is ‘to produce a design that has integrity, and is thoughtfully made to measure for the room it will belong to, with an understanding of proportion’.
I ask about some of their latest projects.
‘We recently made four large oval landscape panels for a client. The panels featured four fantasy urns, which I’ve been wanting to make since seeing similar ones at Prior Park. They also included elements from the landscape around the client’s house, including a lake and boathouse.
‘We’ve also made an abstract ceiling for a longstanding client in Dorset. This one is based on a painting by the artist Paul Klee. We’d suggested ideas for this small study, but nothing really seemed to gel, until a chance conversation about Klee and his series of pictographic paintings sparked the idea of translating one of them into plaster. I’ve always loved [Klee’s painting] Secret Letters, but our client, who has an excellent eye, came up with Park Bei Lu, which Klee painted in 1938. It’s an abstract reminder of the magnificent trees in the garden outside.’
There is a strong heritage of decorative plasterwork in Devon, Jenny tells me, particularly from the 17th century.
‘Totnes has some amazing ceilings and there’s the incredible Tree of Jesse in Dartmouth Museum. North Devon has the work of the Abbott family who are unusual in that we know their names – John Abbott’s pattern book is in the Devon Records Office.
‘We had an interesting enquiry a few years ago. New clients sent us pictures of a fragment of 17th-century plaster they’d purchased from an antique dealer. The fragment was about two feet high and featured a little knight standing on the head of a dozy-looking lion. It looked similar, stylistically, to the Abbott overmantel in Barnstaple museum, but no one was sure where it had come from.
‘The clients were determined sleuths! They eventually traced its origins to an overmantel in the Trevelyan Hotel in Barnstaple, dating to around 1625. By the 1900s the room that contained the overmantel was being used as a woodshed and the building was completely demolished in the 1960s. A picture survives in George Bankart’s
The Art of the Plasterer – the bible of traditional plasterers in the UK. The clients commissioned us to recreate the overmantel incorporating the fragments of the knight and lion. It now hangs in their beautiful house in Dorset. Later we helped make a new ceiling for their library, also strongly influenced by the work of the Devon school of plasterers.’
Not all the work is large scale and I admire some enchanting, moulded plaques in the studio.
‘I’ve recently been making these bas relief plaques,’ says Geoffrey, ‘which we sell via our website. These pieces are initially modelled in clay and then moulded and cast in plaster of Paris. They are designed to hang on a wall and are a more accessible way to appreciate our work for people who aren’t in the market for a grand ceiling!
‘I love sculpting flowers and trying to capture their ephemeral and delicate beauty in the medium of clay, so there are quite a few floral panels, and also acanthus leaf studies and oak leaves, as well as more architectural pieces.’
I notice a discreet ‘GP’ in the corner of these smaller pieces and ask whether Geoffrey signs all his work.
‘I only started signing my work a few years ago. It was a condition of the listed building consent for a new ceiling I made in a beautiful old house in Dorset. The ceiling had to be signed and dated, so it could never be mistaken for older work. Since then I’ve signed most of my work. It’s an artist’s statement really, that I made this plasterwork, and I see it as sculpture.’ .
@geoffreyprestonsculpture
geoffreypreston.co.uk
