Note 230 — Chapter XII · (XXVI.)

The principle of sgraffito-work, that is the scratching through a thin superimposed coat to bring to view an under layer of a different colour, seems to have been established first in pottery making, and in this connection the Italians called it ‘Sgraffiato.’ The adoption of the process for the decoration of surfaces of plaster or cement was an innovation of the Renaissance, and Vasari appears to have been the first writer who gives a recipe for it. According to his account in the Lives, it was a friend of Morto da Feltro, the Florentine Andrea di Cosimo, who first started the work, and Vasari describes the process he employed in phrases that correspond with the wording of the present chapter (Opere, ed. Milanesi, V, 207). A modern expert describes the process as follows: ‘A wall is covered with a layer of tinted plaster, and on this is superimposed a thin coating of white plaster. The outer coat is scratched through, and the colour behind it is revealed. Then all the white surface outside the design is cut away, and a cameo-like effect given to the design. This is the art of Sgraffito as known to the Italian Renaissance’ (Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1889, p. 125). The process dropped out of use after a while, but was revived in Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly through the agency of the architect Gottfried Semper, the author of Der Stil. It is sometimes used in our own country both on monumental and on domestic buildings, and as it is simple and cheap and permanent it is well fitted for modern use in our climate. The back of the Science School in Exhibition Road, S. Kensington, was covered with sgraffiti by the pupils of the late F. W. Moody about 1872. They would be the better now for a cleansing with the modern steam-blast.