Artisans repurpose discarded decorative plasterwork

A freshly unmoulded ornamental mantle piece. Craftspeople are seeing a demand for historic ornamental plasterwork 'because people don't want their ceilings to be flat and boring'. Photos: TNS

Thirty-five years ago, when John Doherty was doing rehab work for a student housing company in Philadelphia, removing old plasterwork to make way for drywall (a type of board), he was struck by the beauty of the buildings’ antique plaster flourishes – all destined for the landfill.

Instead of throwing the pieces out, he began salvaging them to sell at a flea market on the weekends. Then he learned that he could make rubber moulds of the intricate pieces and replicate them as many times as he wanted, for use in his own designs. “It became my own Home Depot,” he says.