Shifting temperatures and humidity are affecting the delicate painted surfaces and conservation of the plasterwork has led to a build-up of salts under the plaster, pushing it off the walls.
Residential streets are lined with houses with collapsing porches, fallen plasterwork and hopeful For Sale signs.
On more careful examination, over 150 such structures throughout the Los Angeles area revealed similar fractures, even though they showed no outward signs of failure, nor had any cracks in the plasterwork within.
As an idea, Britain was "declining and out of date".Now, as head of a devolved Scottish government, hosting The Economist in his Georgian drawing room (open fire, elegant sofas, fine plasterwork) he was on his most conciliatory form.
Built of coral ragstone, roofed with mangrove poles, and covered with rag and lime mortar, the houses have fine plasterwork, decorative rows of niches, and deeply carved doors.
The Pyramids of Egypt contain plasterwork executed at least 4,000 years ago that is still hard and durable.
The interior of the auditorium (restored 1967) is particularly opulent and features gilded plasterwork and countless electric light bulbs.
The free and lively interplay of these elements is accented by a lavish use of decorative plasterwork, gilding, and statuary and by wall and ceiling murals.
Stuccowork, in architecture, fine exterior or interior plasterwork used as three-dimensional ornamentation, as a smooth paintable surface, or as a wet ground for fresco painting.
Interior plasterwork is designed according to the type of lathing to which it is applied and the number of applications that are necessary.
Obviously, 20th-century building costs and methods rarely permit real quality in elaborate panelling or highly ornate plasterwork, nor would this sort of imitative design be appropriate in a modern building.
