Plasterwork provides the reader with an introduction to the importance of plasterwork in British decoration. An opening essay on the history and chronology of plasterwork -- from the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras to its glorious peak in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and subsequent use in various Revivals -- is followed by a gallery of 100 superb black-and-white photographs. Here are magnificent plasterwork ceilings, their ornamentation and inset painting, elegant capitals and columns, and elaborate stucco overmantels -- the fruits of some of the most famous craftsmen in history.