Churches, chapels and historic interiors · United States
Sanctuary plaster, matched to what is already there
Church work is almost never a catalogue order. It is a length of cornice that has gone, a capital that came down, a ceiling that lost its ribs to a leak — and the only correct answer is a piece modelled against the ones still standing. That is the work, and it travels: fitted by our crew in Washington State, crated and shipped anywhere in the US.
What a church usually needs
Ceilings that have taken water
A roof or a parapet lets go and the ornament above the nave goes with it. Sound plaster is kept; the lost sections are modelled against what survives and cast to match, rather than the whole ceiling being replaced with something flatter.
Ornament nobody makes any more
The building is a hundred years old and the shop that ran its cornice closed eighty years ago. There is no part to order. A fragment, or a clear photograph with a scale in it, is enough to model from.
Capitals, corbels and ribs
The pieces that carry the eye up. Cast in fibre-reinforced gypsum for interiors, or in GRG where a span needs the strength — hollow, so a capital is lifted by two people rather than a lift.
Work that has to happen between services
A sanctuary is in use most weeks of the year. Casting happens at the bench, not on site, so the disruptive part is measured in days of fitting rather than months of a workshop in the aisle.
Working with a committee
Most of these decisions are made by a building committee, not one person, and usually against a budget raised specifically for the work. Three things make that easier, so we do them as a matter of course:
- A cast sample before you commit. The actual profile, in the actual material, in your hand at the meeting. A photograph of a sample is not the same thing and committees are right not to decide from one.
- Drawn and dimensioned first. Every run and every piece is drawn and signed off before a mould is opened, so what arrives is what was approved.
- Phased if it has to be. A nave this year and the chancel next, cast from the same moulds, so work funded in stages still matches when it meets.
Questions committees ask
- Can you match ornament from a photograph alone?
- Often, if the photograph is square to the work and has a tape measure or a ruler in it for scale. A surviving fragment is better. A raking-light shot — taken with light across the surface rather than straight at it — shows depth that a flat photograph hides, and depth is what a modeller needs.
- Is this work suitable for a listed or landmarked building?
- The method is the traditional one: model, mould, cast in gypsum. Whether a specific intervention meets your local landmark commission’s standard is a question for them and your architect, and we will supply drawings and material data for that submission. We will not tell you it is pre-approved, because no supplier can.
- How heavy is it, overhead?
- Castings are hollow, not solid. Fibre-reinforced gypsum runs roughly 9–14 kg per square metre and GRP 4–7 — light enough that fixing back to sound substrate is normal joinery rather than a structural question. Your engineer should still see the figures for anything large over a seated congregation, and we provide them.
- Do you travel, or do we find a local fitter?
- We travel: our own crew installs anywhere in the country. If you would rather use a local contractor, we cast, crate and ship, and they fit to our drawings. Either way the modelling and casting is ours.
Send photographs of the damage
A wide shot, a close one, and something in frame for scale. We will tell you what can be matched, what it weighs, and what it costs — before anyone takes it to the committee.
