Stucco, marmorino, polished plaster, Venetian plasters, Italian plaster

Marmorino Veneziano

I have had a few enquiries about how to produce a marmorino veneziano finish.  There are a number of ways of doing this, but here's the one I find most effective.

First of all: don't use pigment in your marmorino.  The colours should be produced purely by the colour of the marble dust.  As you can imagine, this means that the colours will all be very pale and subtle.  We have six coloured dusts that we use, then by blending each dust, the colour range can be extended.

Here's the process, if you're applying the finish over a dry-wall or gypsum plastered surface.  If you're applying the finish on a facade, it's best to build up a few layers of intonacho first.

1. Apply a layer of quartz primer.  I always use a brush, never a roller.  Allow this to dry overnight.
2. Apply a first layer of marmorino.  Keep this layer fairly thick, and apply it in a random manner, with larger sweeps than you would normally use for a stucco-type finish, but still avoid straight lines.  Allow this layer to completely dry.
3. Apply a second layer, in a similar manner to the first, but tighter.  Allow this to completely dry.
4. Apply a third layer in a random manner, but without too much pressure.  After you've covered one or two metres, go back into this with what we call "half a hand" - a small amount of material on a clean trowel, and re-work what you've covered.  Then move on and apply the first layer to another metre or so.  While this is taking up, drop back and polish the first section.
5. Depending on whether you're working alone or with another person, polishing starts when the marmorino is about 50% dry.  This can either be done with a hot or cold trowel, depending on how much polish you require.

Personally, with marmorino veneziano, I don't like it to be too highly polished.  If you don't have a polishing iron (the type used for stucco caldo) simply use a hot-air gun to heat the blade of your polishing trowel, but this needs to be used at a very specific point - it's run over the surface of the marmorino very lightly but really brings out a deep polish.

After this, the way of treating the surface depends on the look you're trying to achieve.  While the surface is still wet (within 8-10 hours), but before 24 hours, apply two layers of Marseilles soap - one horizontally with a brush, then one vertically.  This is a home-made mixture, not the sort of thick, trowel-applied soaps that you can buy.  Once dry, you can buff this with a soft cloth.

There are other ways of finishing, like encaustic wax, etc, but if you're interested in these drop me a line and I'll be happy to expand.

Fresco Marmorino

We've recently developed another polished plaster technique which is based on an old method: fresco marmorino.  The application of the pigments is exactly the same, however we have adjusted the marmorino base so that we apply the pigment over a pitted and veiled surface which has been polished.  You can increase the depth of the finish by building up three or four layers of colour.

The result is really effective. Here's how it turned out on this feature wall which we did in December.  The rich burnt orange marmorino really seems to glow.

Colours outside

We've been working on a process for producing strong colours - reds and blues - in stucco lustro which will withstand our weather when used outside.

If you've been to Venice, you'll see that deep colours are sometimes used on facades, however they generally weather, which is fine in Venice but not really acceptable if the finish is used in a contemporary setting.

So after many hours of experimenting, we have finally cracked it.  We have two highly individual exterior projects coming up, where we will use the technique.  So we'll post some pictures soon, although we'll be keeping the technique very close to our chests!