Stucco
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Stucco. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
stuk'ko, a building material. It is composed of lime and white marble crushed into a powder. It is a lime plaster in which sand has been replaced by pulverized marble. It is a beautiful white plastering material suitable for inside work. It takes a smooth, satiny finish and looks like marble. It may be molded into flowers, arabesques, moldings, cornices, and the like. It can be molded more easily than marble may be carved. Though far more substantial and more beautiful than ordinary plaster, it is considered a sham in comparison with cut marble. Stucco was a favorite material with Moorish, that is to say, Arab architects. The interior decoration of the Alhambra is done in stucco. The pendant ceiling in Henry VIII's chapel in Westminster is of stucco. Some of the fine work in Florence and Rome is of stucco, but the Italians were partial to marble. Nearly all German work is in honest stone. See Cement ; Concrete ; Sculpture ; Plaster Of Paris
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a fine plaster used for coating walls. It is usually made of pure lime slaked and settled, mixed with clean sand. Stucco varies in quality and composition with the purpose for which it is intended. For internal decoration gypsum and pounded marble enter into its composition, as well as gelatine or glue in solution. For external work the stucco employed is of a coarser kind, and is variously prepared, the different sorts being generally distinguished by the name of cements. Also the third coat of plastering when prepared for painting, and a popular name for plaster of Paris or gypsum.
The Encyclopedia of Founding (1892)
A common term for various kinds of composition used for the finer parts of plaster-work on masonry and interior decorations. By the addition to common plaster of other suitable ingredients it is made to resemble the various kinds of marbles. See GYPSUM; PLASTER CAST.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote in 1910 that stucco was lime and pulverised marble, a fine indoor material "considered a sham in comparison with cut marble", it described a craft tradition already being displaced: Portland cement had by then largely replaced lime as the binder, and through the 20th century stucco became chiefly an exterior cladding of cement, lime and sand on wire lath, sprayed or troweled onto framed houses rather than modelled into arabesques. Since the 1960s the field has split again, with synthetic Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) "“ foam board with a thin polymer-and-acrylic skin "“ imitating the look; trapped-moisture and rot failures in barrier-type EIFS brought large lawsuits and building-code changes in the United States from the 1990s, and drained systems are now standard. The old aesthetic verdict has also softened: historic lime stucco and scagliola are now conserved as skilled work in their own right rather than dismissed as imitation marble. One detail in Aiton's is worth correcting "“ the famous pendant fan vault at Westminster belongs to Henry VII's chapel and is carved stone, not stucco.
Written for this edition, 2026.