Decoration
Pictorial decoration is the art embellishing any bearing: walls, wood, canvas, paper, glass, pottery… In great noble palaces it added prestige, it was filling up and served as furniture. Various old techniques are still used today in order to decorate walls, furniture, ceilings…, i.e. fake stuccoes, fake woods and woodworks, fake marbles, fake damasks, grisailles, encaustic, stencil, trompe-l’oeil. As to the use of colour, all these may be executed by means of ancient or modern techniques. Decoration still embellishes our small and great homes, totally transforming a room just by a few touches.
“Tromper”, to trick or to deceive in French: we have examples of this technique ever since ancient Greece and the Roman age. The trompe-l’oeil is a decorative pictorial technique which, through expedients such as the shadow play, the perspective, the light, gives the observer the illusion that he/she is looking at real and three-dimensional objects, painted though on a two-dimensional surface.
Decorated ceilings
Decorated ceilings are an important decorative space. If the ceiling to be decorated is more than three metres high, it is possible to do a trompe-l’oeil, a false perspective; if the ceiling is less than three meters high, also a decorated frieze, a stencil, a sky may be done… it would always bear the effect of a greater light and a wider surface.
Restoration
Restoration is the renewal and preservation of historical works. In ancient times it was conceived as a simple maintenance or a renovation of a work. The first manuals on the cleaning and covering of paintings, as well as the reinforcing of plasters, begin to spread during the second half of the seventeenth century. historical archaeological studies started towards the end of the eighteenth century, following the excavations in Pompei and Ercolano. From the twentieth century on a restoration theory is systematized, under the name of scientific restoration.
Stained-glass and mirrors
Since ancient times enamel is the most widespread technique to decorate glass. The colours used are a mixture of metal oxides, glassy powder and a fatty non-conductor. Once the object has been decorated, it is put in a particular furnace, the “muffle”, in which it bakes on a temperature lower than the fusion of the glass. This technique is particularly resistant in time. There still exist so far some very ancient exemplars, Syriac and Roman ones.
Glasses are first cut in and then decorated. The design is realized on an adhesive surface, adherent to the silver side of the glass. Once the parts to be decorated are cut out, the glass is cut in and painted with oil colours
Silks and Batik
Batik is a technique used to colour fabrics. The parts which are not to be dyed are covered with wax, vegetable pastes or resins. The first findings of fabric fragments date back to the fourth century, in Egypt. This technique was used also in China, India, Japan, Africa.
Porcelains
The porcelain decoration dates back to the Seventh century China and is closely linked to historic evolutions and fashions. In Europe all colours used for decoration derive from metal oxides and the formulas were jealously kept by manufactures and more precisely by the painters themselves who had discovered them and were taking their own formulas with them in each passing through the various manufactures. The colours for decoration bake on a temperature of 800-900 degrees.
