OF RAISED WORK IN GESSO

Decorative design in gesso stands, it may be said, midway between painting and sculpture, partaking in its variations of the characters of each in turn—the child or younger sister of both, holding, as it were, the hands of each, playful, light-hearted, familiar, associated in its time with all kinds of domestic furniture and adornment.

With an origin perhaps as ancient as the other arts, its true home is in Italy. We find it at Pompeii, with its relatives, stucco and plaster-work, in association with architecture, which also are seen in such choice forms in the decoration of the ceilings and walls of Roman tombs, such as the famous examples of the Via Latina. We find gesso work also in direct association with painting in the devotional pictures of the early Italian schools, used for the diapered backgrounds and nimbi of saints, and raised emblems and ornaments. It reappears in our own country in the painted rood-screens of Norfolk and Suffolk. At Southwold, for instance, there is a notable screen with panels, painted with figures of the apostles, the backgrounds consisting of diapers in raised gesso.

The revival of classical taste and love of classical lore and ornamental detail at the time of the renascence in Italy led to later and highly ornate development of gesso and stucco, of which we may see elaborate examples in the ceilings of the Doria palace at Genoa, for instance; and in the fine decorative scheme of Pinturicchio in the Appartamenti Borgia in the Vatican, gilded gesso is used for caskets, weapons, and other details in the frescoes painted on the walls, gilded relief work and blue grounds being carried out on the vaulted ceilings above, in arabesques and medallions.

A beautiful model of part of the Appartamenti, by Signor Mariani, may be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum, where also choice examples of gesso work may be found in picture and mirror frames, and gilded coffers or cassones. There are several of these from Florence with figures in relief on flat backgrounds, punctured or stamped with patterns on the paste, and afterwards gilded with rich ornamental effect.

Then again we find gesso used underneath the burnished gold letters and leaf work of the mediaeval illuminators.

The Italian craftsman’s skill in gesso seems to survive in the Italian confectioner with his freehand decorations squeezed out in the form of raised ornaments of plaster and sugar on birthday cakes and such like; and Italian workmen are still the masters of the craft and mystery of all manner of plaster-work, including moulding and casting.

Now there are various kinds of gesso and recipes for making it, and it can be worked in different ways, and on different scales, and in different degrees of relief.

For fine work on a small scale, such as might be used for caskets or small panels in cabinets, and the decoration of furniture generally, Gesso Duro is the best.

Method of Working with the Brush in Gesso

It is a mixture of whitening soaked in cold water till quite soft, glue or gelatine, boiled linseed oil, and a little resin, mixed well together to the consistency of cream. There is also a gesso used by frame-makers composed of whitening and parchment size.

Supposing it is desired to work a design on a panel of wood, the wood had best have a coat of shellac or varnish first. Then having determined your design lay on the paste with the point of a long-pointed sable brush—the kind known as a “rigger,” or small water-colour brush will answer—lightly dropping the gesso from the point of the brush or slowly dragging it, so that the gesso may flow from its point, as the design may require, and adding more of the paste where greater relief is required.

Filling for Picture-frame, in Gesso Duro

Gesso Duro takes some days to dry, but dries, as its name implies, very hard. It can then be scraped down if necessary, and worked on again or touched on to any extent; and the peculiar quality of the relief given by brush work is, perhaps, best left untouched, or at least only added to, and not taken away from by scraping down, although a very fine finish could be obtained in this way, giving the work almost the look of ivory, though, I think, in that case, departing from its true character.

The frame margin given was worked in Gesso Duro, from a design of mine, by Harold Weeks.

The design for a bell-pull was modelled in gesso by Osmund Weeks, for reproduction in electro silver, the sea-horse being in copper.

I have also used for work of about this scale simply a mixture of plaster of paris or thin glue, which answered fairly well if done with directness, as the mixture dries very quickly, and is apt to crack off the ground when dry.

Design for a Bell-pull, Modelled in Gesso

By Walter Crane

The device for the Art Workers’ Guild is an example of this method, also worked with a brush, and afterwards tinted with lacquers reduced to pale tints by methylated spirit. The lacquer, of course, hardens the surface.

For bolder work and higher relief I have used plaster of paris with thin glue or gelatine. In this, in proceeding to model the design, you dip small pieces of cotton-wool pulled out finely, and having saturated them in the mixture, you build up your design on the panel, which may be of fibrous plaster, and suited for insertion in wall, frieze, or ceiling, or fireplace. It is important to wet the ground or shellac it to stop the suction, before laying on the gesso. It will dry slowly enough to be modelled with the fingers or tools, and added to when dry, or finished with brush work. It dries very fast, and the fibre of the cotton-wool makes it cling to the panel.

I have worked figures on a frieze with a brush on a fibrous plaster panel, and had them cast afterwards, since plaster and glue on large surfaces without fibre is apt to crack off. “The Dance” was a frieze panel worked in this way.

There are various patents and materials in the market for working in gesso. One of the best I have met with is called “Denoline.” It consists of a fine powder, sold in tins, which only requires to be mixed with cold water to convert it into a paste of any consistency required. Flour appears to be an ingredient, and wheat flour, I believe, was used by the old Italian gesso workers.

Gesso Panel

The Dance: Frieze Panel in Gesso

The frame border was worked in this material, the gesso mixed as stiffly as possible, laid on and modelled with an ordinary modelling tool. It dries slowly and can be retouched. It is a little too sticky, and no doubt requires, like all the different varieties of gesso, its own peculiar treatment.

Picture-frame in Oak with Gesso (“Denoline”) Filling

It might seem at first sight that such a material had no particular limitations or natural laws which in all art are so serviceable in evolving what we call style. Yet elastic as it appears to be, and possessing such considerable range of effect, experience soon teaches us that it has its own most fitting characteristics and tendencies in ornament. The artist, so far from desiring to disguise the real conditions of the work, would rather emphasize their peculiar characteristics. For instance, in laying on and modelling any design in gesso with a brush, he will find the brush and the paste conspire together to favour the production of certain forms of ornament, delicate branch and leaf and scroll work, for instance, and dotted borderings.

Treatment of Form in Gesso Decoration

By Walter Crane

Such forms as these the brush, charged with gesso, almost naturally takes, and the leaf shapes may be considered almost as the reflection of the form of the brush itself.

The modelling of the more raised smooth parts is produced by gradually and lightly adding—superimposing while moist fresh gesso, on the system of pâte sur pâte, which amalgamates with that underneath. The artist, in modelling the limbs of figures, would emphasize the main muscular masses, allowing for the natural tendency of the paste to soften its own edges in running together: so that a limb would be built up somewhat in the way indicated in the drawing by successive layers of the material floated over each other while moist. Of course, the success of the result depends upon not only the nicety of touch but also on the proper consistency of the gesso, which, if mixed too thin, would be likely to lose form and run out of bounds. Gesso, therefore, for brush work should be mixed like the valetudinarian’s gruel in one of Miss Austen’s novels—“Thin, but not too thin.”

System of Modelling with the Brush in Gesso

Gesso Decoration: the Dining-Room, 1a, Holland Park

It is of little use giving exact quantities, since satisfactory working depends upon all sorts of variable conditions, almost in the nature of accidents, such as temperature, quality of the materials, and nature of tools, none of which behaves exactly in the same way on all occasions, and this variability must necessarily lead to different results in different hands.

Gesso Decoration: the Dining-Room, 1a, Holland Park

Frieze and Panel over Fireplace and subsidiary work on the Woodwork of the Fireplace, Designed by Walter Crane. The Fireplace Designed by Philip Webb From a Photograph by W. E. Gray

Gesso Decoration: Detail of Coffered Ceiling, 1a, Holland Park

It is only personal experience of the subtle mechanical and material conditions which are inseparable parts of the production of all work of the nature of art, which can really determine their fitness to each individual worker, who must sooner or later, if his work is alive, make certain variations to suit his own particular idiosyncrasies.

Gesso Panel Silvered and Tinted with Coloured Lacquers (part of Frieze in Dining-Room at 1a, Holland Park)

Panel in Gesso, Tinted with Lacquers and Lustre Paint

It is perfectly hopeless to attempt to pursue any form of art on purely mechanical precepts and principles. A few plain and practical directions, as to a traveller seeking his road in an unknown land, may be given, and the rest must be learnt step by step in experience, and as much as can be gathered from opportunities of seeing the work done by skilled hands, from which, indeed, everything learnable can be learnt.

Panel in Gesso, Tinted with Lacquer

Even complete mastery over materials is, after all, not everything. In fact, from the artistic (or inventive) point of view, work only begins there, as expression comes after or with speech.

Design has much analogy to poetry. Unless the motive is real and organic, unless the thought and form have something individual in them, unless the feeling is true, it fails to interest us. Herein lies the whole question of artistic production.

Yet is it worth while to learn what can be learnt about any form of art, if only it enables one to realize its true nature and something of the laws of its expression, which knowledge, at least, if it does not confer creative power, greatly increases the intelligent pleasure of its appreciation.