Gesso or Gypsum?

We bought a bag of white powder plaster at Orsini builder's merchants which we were told was pure Gesso.The countryside around Manoppello and Roccamorice in particular seems to have deposits of this mineral that is a dirty yellow grey colour with quite large crystals.A company called La Farage still make Gesso in Abruzzo.
Locally several villages are named after this mineral;Gessopalena being one such place.

thanks to website panramio for photo

The mineral is burnt in a furnace and the resulting white powder is called Gesso in Italy and Gypsum elsewhere.It is actually Calcium Sulphate.The process can also create 'plaster of paris' which apparently gets its name from the plaster used by specialist French masons who came to work in English cathedrals during the middle ages.Its not something that naturally lends itself to stone pointing or building but maybe it was mixed with some other substance?

The term Gesso in England is really only used to describe a 'ground' for paintings on canvas or wood panels.

thanks to The National Gallery for this information:

Gesso
Gesso is the Italian word for the white mineral gypsum. It is used as a ground or preparatory layer to ensure a smooth surface for painting or gilding on wood. It was also sometimes used for the priming of canvas.

Gesso consists of gypsum bound in size (an adhesive made from animal skin and waste). The common practice was for a coarse lower layer to be applied (gesso grosso), followed by a finer upper layer (gesso sottile). It has to be scraped and sanded to make it absolutely smooth. In some unfinished or damaged pictures parts of the gesso layer can be seen.

The gesso could be built up to form a low relief on the wood known as pastiglia. It could also be cut or incised - much of the fine details of picture frames is cut in the gesso rather than in the wood below. In panel painting north of the Alps, instead of gypsum chalk or some other form of calcium carbonate was generally used bound with size as the white ground.

I imagine that the gesso made in the north used lime putty or dry lime rather than gesso powder?

Beach Houses in Pescara

frugal life?

What do we realy need? What can we do without? If you think about the things we seem to see as indispensible to our modern lives the list is endless:
laptop
mobile
tv
phone
washing machine
dishwasher
car
central heating
bath
microwave
oven
iron
hairdryer

I suppose thats not really a very long list compared to some buteven so I've discovered just how difficult it is to live for any length of time with these things.

When we first arrive at the house I feel quite positive;after all we have electricity even if it is only through one long cable with a socket on the end! We have cold water through a single tap at floor height (thanks to a very stupid plumber) and an old gas stove. Keeping everything running smoothly requirs lots of effort.With no sink it's most practical to take a bowl of water outside and wash up there, transfering all the clean stuff into another bowl and taking it back to the kitchen to be put away in lidded boxes to stop it getting covered in dust.

A solar shower that gets laid on the van roof all day to heat up is then fixed ,with a stretchy elastic cable, to the branch of an old olive tree.

Two clay roof tiles form a primative base and stop your feet getting muddy and an old seatless chair stands close by to hang towel and clothes on. At first this seems a brilliant solution to our lack of an indoor shower but as the days wear on it becomes more and more irritating;the floor tiles get invaded by ants that crawl up your legs and nip you. The soap slips out of my hand and falls into a pile of dry olive leaves(thank God for Lush shampoo bars) which then stick to it.And even more annoyingly a neighbour who normally choses the early morning to walk past along the lane changes their routine and now has to be accounted for when deciding on a time to set up the shower!

I end up showering in the dark with a wind-up torch giving off a weak ray of led light -illuminating the ants.And if I'm really unlucky the Hornets which always fly out to investigate a light.

In the end the effort of performing these everyday tasks under such circumstances starts to become almost unbearable and each day they seem to take up more and more time which I feel that I am wasting.Yet if I was living 100 years ago I would just accept them as part of my normal routine.The difference is that I have got used to having all of the things I think that I am entitled to and doing without them seems in some way unfair.Very childish I'm sure.It certainly makes you think about how we take things very much for granted.

diy project: autumn leaf bouquet | Design*Sponge

diy project: autumn leaf bouquet | Design*Sponge

Quattro Volte -4 lives

Feeling withdrawl symptons from Italy last week I ordered this wonderful film from lovefilm on DVD.The title comes from Pythagoras,having four lives within us – the mineral, the vegetable, the animal and the human – "thus we must know ourselves four times".

The cycle of the four lives begin and end with images of charchol burning(once in a little stove top burner and later in a huge charchol furnace in the woods)and although it is a film that will make you feel very sad it also has moments of high comedy such as the incident when an ape van rolls back and crashes into the goat pen allowing the animals to rush out and create mayhem around the village - whose inhabitants are away re-enacting a Roman ceremony! The accident appears to have been triggered by Vuk the sheep dog - who won an award at Cannes for his part in the film.

What I miss now I'm back in Cornwall

What I'm missing most now I'm back in Cornwall

Bread -there's nothing as good as the bread we buy in Italy
Amadaeus Pizzeria where we can have a huge pizza with fresh porcini mushrooms a bottle of superb Montepulcino wine and tiramasu with coffee for 30 euros!I could never bring myself to eat a Pizza Express pizza againg.
Sunshine - it's still summer there
9 olive trees - which are pretty old and gnarled but I can tie up my hammock and relax
Sunday market in Lettomanopplello

Billy and Shelia but not the 2 annoying puppies who stole my flipflops
Veg that has flavour - not what we get in the UK
Coffee that costs 1 euro and tastes wonderful

lime and clay workshops in 2012

I've found it very difficult getting the right help and information in Italy to help us make the best choices with our house restoration.

It's easy to read lots of books or look on websites but there's no substitute for actually doing it yourself!

So in 2012 I plan to run some one-day workshops in Abruzzo on using lime and clay to make plasters and paints.From basic stone work and repointing to appling a natural limewash paint I'd like to share my knowledge with you.

old cob from an earth building - still pretty strong

Making lime putty in buckets

If you are interested please email me and I'll be in touch in the New Year once I have sorted out some dates!

my email is nowinabruzzo@gmail.com