Scagliola plaster

In response to Alex Warren's request for a recipe for scagliola I
offer the following.  American scagliola is basically Keene's cement
and pigments.  It was often used to imitate marble, and can be
polished to a high finish. Keene's cement is unhydrated calcium
sulfate (gypsum), and is much harder than plaster of paris.

I've found a few references.  The first is called "Keene Cement
Craft," by O. Arnold Radtke, published in 1943, by the Bruce
Publishing Co., Milwaukee.  The other is a paper "Replication and
Restoration of Scagliola" in "The Interiors Handbook for Historic
Buildings," Historic Preservation Education Foundation, 1988, L of
C. No. 88 83560.  That paper references several other articles,
principally "Artificial Marble and Scagliola", Architectural Forum,
51 (1929), 557-64.

Dean Koga, AIA

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 9:33
                 Distributed: Tuesday, October 10, 1995
                        Message Id: cdl-9-33-003
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