Chalcot Crescent

The house had been divided into flats in 1974 and reunited by the current owners forty years later. Every trace of the original cornice survived only in the front two rooms — and even there under enough paint to erase the detail entirely.

We took a squeeze of the surviving profile in the drawing room, cut a zinc template, and ran 46 linear metres of new lime cornice in situ across the piano nobile. The stair hall was stripped by hand with poultice rather than heat, which took three weeks longer and kept every arris intact.

Walls were finished in seven coats of marmorino, tinted from a sample board viewed at four different hours of the day. The client chose the coolest of the five options — the correct one for a north-facing crescent.