Gimson’s approach to plasterwork
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Gimson was asked to contribute to Plain Handicrafts, a collection of essays by artists and designers to describe principles of design and methods of workmanship on different crafts. The book was edited by the designer A. H. Mackmurdo and published in 1892. It is Gimson’s only published account of his work practices.
Gimson wrote an essay on plasterwork. He described the materials and techniques used to produce historic work, such as the elaborate Italianate friezes at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, and the coarser stamped or cast English work popular in the seventeenth century. He criticised the split between the modelling and casting in contemporary work which created too much mechanical labour as well as the fashion for sharp lines and curves and undercutting. He preferred, ‘dull lines, gentle curved and little variety of relief’. For Gimson plaster was a soft, malleable material and its treatment should reflect this. He advocated going to nature as inspiration for designs although ‘it will be impossible for the plaster-worker to get anything more than a suggestion of nature into his work’. He summed up his principles, writing:
‘These, then, are the chief things that the plaster-worker should bear in mind in his designing: (1) That he must go to nature for his ideas, and to old work to learn how to express them; (2) that the expression must be decorative – that is , harmonious in arrangement, and suitable to the position in which it is to be seen; (3) that it must be expressive of the qualities of plaster, and not imitative of textures and effects natural to some other material.’
This approach was evident in Gimson’s designs