Stucco: beyond beauty, a symbol of culture and history

The real stucco or plaster has differences in detail, stucco in old times is made of pure gypsum or plaster but today they use more additives. Today you can find another formula which changed in a way that is totally different from old times. Today we have lime based stucco instead of old fashion gypsum stucco or plaster. Today you can find premier stucco and supper stucco which is totally different from old fashion ones. These are totally new brands that changed the face and quality of old fashion gypsum based stucco in Persia and other countries which departed from Iran in the last 4 hundred years from Afghanistan to India, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan ….

The history of plastering in Isfahan

If you want to understand the history of plastering in Iran , it is better you concentrate on Isfahan and check the history of plastering in Isfahan. The very base of plaster and plastering in Persia is gypsum. We have hundreds of gypsum mines and gypsum processing units and factories to produce large amounts of gypsum powder to use in construction of homes and other usages in the country. Today large amounts of gypsum are used to cover the walls, ceiling, as decoration and making statues…etc.

Introducing prominent Iranian Stucco designs and artists

Prominent Iranians stucco designs and artists are a subject we will be talking about, so be with us.To produce normal plaster or stucco, we use plaster fine powder and add enough water and shake it for a short time, you should repeat shaking 2 to 3 times and wait, after this the plaster is ready to use in a form of uniform and fine paste, in normal situation the worker uses this paste by hand or small trowel on the surface of the walls or ceiling, interior and exterior. This simple method needs years of experience to make a solid and uniform plaster on the wall, an expert can make a uniform wall so shiny that there is no need for painting, you can find old walls plastered hundred years by this method without painting in a way that you think it is painted but actually it is not painted but just polished by hand.

Sometimes they paint the plaster with artificial or traditional pigments in white or colorful. We call this kind of stucco the live stucco but we have another kind of system where the final product is dead stucco. If you shake the mixture of water and gypsum many times during the maturing process it will be changed to dead gypsum or dead plaster. The difference is between curing time. The first one, I mean the live plaster, cures and hardens in a few minutes, the workers are familiar by this short time and do their job so fast that before hardening of plaster they shape the final form and just wait for drying in a few days in a normal atmosphere. They polish the surface of plaster fast enough that before painting there is no need to polish it more, even just by scrubbing it with sand paper.
But we have a special technique which by using just small simple knives and chisels the master forms the plaster in different forms like flowers, statues, forms, animal forms …etc. we call this technique “gach bori” which means gypsum cutting. Actually the worker follows the dead plaster processing to make a very fine and uniform paste and by adding layers and layers of this paste to form the three dimensional form like a flower and wait for the hardening process. The dead plaster last long time before hardening so the master has more time to form and reform the plaster and fixing the faults and defects by adding or removing plaster by cutters, knives, and another tools to form the final shape and reach the final quality acceptable by experts and ready to paint by natural water based colors even with really thin layer of pure gold and silver. 
Although this system is simple to talk about but it is a real time consuming hard technique and the master needs years and years of experience to do the job in a proper and acceptable point which today you can find real fine plasters on the wall and ceiling of the palaces and mosques and expensive halls in the form that cuts your breath and blow your mind. Sometimes, the master forms the plaster in the form of aesthetic designs and forms like honey crumbs, animal forms and other beauty forms and sometimes they use small cuttings of mirrors to cover the plaster and making a very shiny surface to cover inside the mosques and shrines and some very expensive hall you can find today. It means the base of mirror working is plastering. And the base of plastering is using gypsum on the structure.
Plastering is very time consuming, in normal procedure two or three workers do the project together. One of them prepares the paste little by little and delivers the plaster to the other coworker and the other one uses this paste on the wall or ceiling and forms and polishes it. Sometimes because of saving time, the project needs many experts to finish the job in a short time.The color of gypsum is white in normal composition. You can add some pigments to change the color but mostly the masters use white one and paint it by different colors in different layers. Today they use artificial pigments and colors like acrylic colors to make more colorful finishing.

Even today they use pure foils of gold, bronze, copper, aluminum, silver or other alloys to cover the plaster forms as last finish. Gypsum is the basic ingredient of plastering in the old history of construction and architecture in Iran. Even today we use it in covering the walls and ceiling. Today we use other ingredients and additives to improve the physical and chemical qualities of gypsum in plastering but in the past the formula of plastering and gypsum was simple or a secret of masters which transferred generation by generation and heart by heart.

First of all, producing gypsum from the ores was a long time consuming process and needed lots of experience and hard work to achieve an acceptable quality. Each mine had its own complicated properties and different degrees of quality. So each expert knew how to enhance the quality of ingredients and change the procedure from place to place. By experience they used their talent to enhance the properties of each ore and modify the defects to achieve the best raw material in their own local market. Today after years and decade and centuries the procedures are more or less the same and it means even hundred years ago the experts knew how to manage the procedures and produce high quality products and this is a sign of degree of talent and science which is inherited to us and we should protect this legacy to transfer it to next generation and this is not possible unless we know these codes and decipher them in a proper way.

Unfortunately, most of these procedures are transferred between generations just by heart and finding a written manual to do the job is too rare and even in some occasions not possible. Because of this, following the old rules of architecture is an obligation and knowing the very strict rules of eastern architecture is not a need but mandatory for the new generation. Plastering and stucco is not an exception in this hierarchy. plastering is simple in essence but very complicated in function. The proof of this theory is the history and age of plasters lasting for decades and years in a good position of health and quality intact and it shows how our ancestors were geniuses and talented and managed their life and jobs in a proper way. Even today we try to know those procedures to mimic them and make a replica of those old fashion plaster workings to show and resemble the historical projects to the next generation.
Making 3 dimensional plaster workings needs years of experience and is different from making flat layer plasters. Knowing the geometry of making a honeycomb plaster working is not a simple job. Making a statue or an animal or floral form from gypsum is too hard as sculpturing. In some occasions even the quality and form of dry raw gypsum is different from old fashioned raw materials used by old masters and ancestors throughout the history of Iran.
Unfortunately finding a real master of plastering is a hard job and because of this repairing and renovating old fashion structures is a hard, expensive and time consuming procedure. Teaching the old fashion procedure to the new generation will raise the quality of the job and will help the new generation to raise the value of the repairing of old plaster working and as a result the quality of the cultural sites would be raised instead.
We wish to visit you next time in Iran to know more about the plaster workings of old structures in Iran in the near future.

( sana Persian tour and travel service provider group)