In the UK, old buildings such as the Victorian style flats are still in use. Usually, it is quite easy to find some decorations and carvings inside the buildings. In the past, those kinds of ornaments could only be seen in the palaces or noble houses because of its high price. However, there was a turning point for the popularization of the decorations. It was the invention of fibrous plaster in Paris, which Frenchman Léonard Alexandre Desachy patented in the UK in 1856. Traditional decorations were mostly made of wood or lime-based plasters and it required skilled experts, which led to high cost. On the other hand, fibrous plaster could be produced fast and efficiently in factories using a mold, which led to lower cost. From the late 19th century to the mid 20th century, fibrous plaster had been broadly used in many British buildings and it led to the democratization of the ornamentation.

In this project, features of fibrous plaster will be explored to understand how it became popularized in British buildings by comparing with traditional lime-based plaster. For this, as a case study, a part of the decorations in Apollo theatre will be selected and reproduced in both the traditional method and the fibrous plaster. In this re-casting process, the differences between these two methods will become clarified and the history of the popularization of a building decoration will be understood in terms of materiality. Also, this study can be extended to the maintenance issues about fibrous plaster decorations in British buildings these days.