- What we found
- A cement render about 25 mm thick, put on in the 1970s over the north wall and the chimney breast. Behind it the stone was wet to the hand even in a dry week, the joints had gone to sand, and a line of black mould came back along the floor every winter.
- What we did
- The render came off by hand with a bolster and lump hammer, in plates the size of roof tiles. We raked the joints, repointed in lime once the wall had dried, laid three coats of plaster and finished with two coats of lime wash in raw sienna.
- At the wall
- 11 daysPlus two weeks of drying with the windows open between stripping and plastering.
Kvoesco · Siena
The Work
Ledger · 2009-2025
Walls We Have Worked OnSix entries from the studio ledger
Six jobs from the ledger we have kept since 2007, set down by year, building and town and nothing more, because the walls belong to the families and parishes who live with them. Each entry opens to what we found when we first tapped the plaster, what we did about it, and how long we spent at the wall: one of us with a borrowed mixer in the early years, four of us now, working from the old carpenter's shop on the south side of Siena with our own lime pits in the yard.
The ledger · six entries
Six Walls, by Year
Open any entry for the finding, the doing and the days. Work like this is priced today at €72-98 per m² for new three-coat plaster and €700-1,600 per m² for fresco cleaning and consolidation, fixed in writing after a €180 survey.
- What we found
- A barrel vault painted in the seventeenth century with garlands and the symbols of the four evangelists, under a roof that had leaked for years. Salts bloomed white along the springing, a third of the painted surface rang hollow under the mallet, and two cracks had been patched in cement.
- What we did
- The roof was mended first. We drew the salts out with paper poultices changed over three weeks, chiselled out the cement patches, injected lime grout behind the hollows through small ports, cleaned the paint with soft brushes and water and infilled the losses in tratteggio.
- At the wall
- 9 weeksThree conservators on a rolling tower, our first long job from the new bottega.
- What we found
- Four flights of an eighteenth-century stair, skimmed in gypsum and rolled with plastic paint in the eighties. Where a corner had crumbled we could see a painted dado of false marble running up beside the steps.
- What we did
- Paint and skim came off with scalpels and spatulas, a flight at a time. We fixed the dado back with lime grout, cleaned it and left its worn patches worn. Above it we laid fresh intonaco one flight per giornata and washed it in pale yellow ochre.
- At the wall
- 4 weeksThe tower came down on 27 June, clear of the Palio pause.
- What we found
- A one-room oratory beside a farm track, whitened four times over, with a cement plinth round the outside holding the damp in. Tapping the altar wall we heard old plaster rather than stone, and a test window the size of a postcard showed red ochre underneath.
- What we did
- The plinth came off first so the wall could dry. Then we lifted the whitewash square by square with scalpels and soft brushes and found a small Saint Lucy. Her face was left exactly as it came out. The losses in her robe were infilled in tratteggio.
- At the wall
- 6 weeksLivia's note on this oratory is set below the ledger.
- What we found
- Five small houses in one row, three peeling out of plastic masonry paint and two still in old lime wash gone grey with forty years of weather. The render beneath all five was lime, and mostly sound.
- What we did
- We took the plastic paint off by hand, filled the cracks with lime mortar and gave each house two coats of lime wash in earth pigments, each matched to scrapings of its own oldest colour, so the row still reads as five houses and not one.
- At the wall
- 3 weeksLaid in May, well inside the April to October season for outside lime.
- What we found
- A painted lunette above the vestment press, buried under a gypsum skim from the sixties, with salts rising at its base where a cement floor had been laid hard against the walls. A test window showed a painted curtain and the edge of a roundel.
- What we did
- We took the skim off a hand's breadth at a time, drew out the salts with poultices, grouted the hollows, cleaned the paint and infilled the losses near the cornice in tratteggio. The parish arranged the permissions, and we supplied the condition report, drawings and photographs.
- At the wall
- 5 weeksThe lunette is drawn further down, before and after.
An aside from the bottega
The Face Under Four Coats
Asked which wall she is proudest of, Livia does not pick the biggest.
Farm oratory near Murlo · 2019
The job I think about most is the little oratory near Murlo. It is one room beside a farm track, with an altar wall not much wider than a kitchen table, and when we arrived it was as white as a dairy.
Under four coats of whitewash we found a small Saint Lucy holding her eyes on a dish. The farmer's mother came up the hill every afternoon of the six weeks to watch. She brought a folding chair, sat in the doorway and hardly said a word while we worked a square at a time.
On the last day she told us that was the face she had prayed to as a girl, before the walls were whitened in the fifties. We had not repainted anything. We had only taken off what was lying on top of her.
Livia
Murlo, 2019
Pl. II · Pl. III
Before and After, in Drawing
The sacristy lunette from the 2025 entry, drawn twice from the same survey station: once as we found it under the skim, once at the curing check. The infill reads as hatching up close and as quiet colour from the sacristy floor.
Pl. II
a, gypsum skim of the 1960s; b, test window T1 opened at the survey; c, salt bloom above the cement floor; d, hollow plaster, mapped by tapping onto the survey sheet.
Pl. III
a, the roundel, cleaned and consolidated; b, tratteggio over the salt losses; c, giornata seams, left visible; d, where test window T1 was cut.