Jean Francois Fuireri

Jean-François Furieri
Master plaster worker
Iconoplast Designs, Inc., Toronto, Ontario

Strong arms. Good balance. No fear of heights. Those are basic qualifications for a plaster worker.

Add to the list: The analytical mind of a detective. Strong in math. Artistic. Willing to work at least 10 years to perfect your skill.

Master plaster worker Jean-François Furieri has all these attributes and more. His great skill puts him in demand all over North America. He’s been featured on “This Old House” and Antiques Roadshow on T.V. If you’ve attended theatre in Toronto or New York City, there is a chance you’ve admired some of his restorations of medallions, oak-leaf scrolls, and fresh-cheeked cupids on plaster ceilings, friezes and balconies.

Despite this success, Furieri calls plaster work the dinosaur of the building restoration trades. He worries, that like the dinosaur, his trade may die out.

Furieri is doing his best to keep the ancient art going. At any given time his Toronto firm, Iconoplast Designs, employs six apprentices. They learn to form moulds, mix ground gypsum and water to the right consistency, and strip away the mould to leave a smooth perfect sheen on the plaster.

Plaster work is an ancient art, one of the oldest building professions. Archaeologists have found decorative plaster work on Egyptian pyramids more than 4,000 years old.

Furieri learned at his father’s knee, the third generation to practice the trade. He would have continued in the family business in Cannes, but he fell in love with a Canadian woman and followed her to Toronto.

At his Toronto studio, he practices the art of plaster based on traditional methods, but with the benefit of additives and resins that give plaster strength and flexibility. Unlike the master tradesmen of earlier times, who were very secretive about what they did, Furieri shares his methods with his apprentices. Plaster restoration is his favourite part of the business, although he creates new work too.

Any job begins with hand drawing at his drafting table. Drawing gives him a sense of proportion and scale. Computer drawing tools—such as the CAD system—prove their worth when it comes to designing prototypes.

One of Furieri’s jobs was restoring the ceiling of the former Pantages Theatre, now the Canon Theatre.

“The poor theatre had been slaughtered,” he explains. “It was perforated, from hanging acoustic material, … almost completely destroyed.” He had to recreate large portions of plaster ceiling. Working from a photographic record, Furieri drew and designed a replica.

Furieri’s most recent commission—and one that has garnered much praise—was One King West, in Toronto. It is an impressive condominium tower that was built adjacent to a 1910 bank building. To brace the new structure, it was necessary to remove large sections of the “fabric” of the bank. That meant meticulously removing large sections of mouldings and the elaborate provincial medallions of the ceiling.

“The beauty of my trade is that with every job I get to learn. I have to figure out how the plaster I am restoring was created and worked.”

It is a field that women can and do get into. As the father of four daughters, Furieri would welcome any one of them to continue the family tradition.

Iconoplast Designs, Inc.
http://www.iconoplast.com/

Canon Theatre, Toronto
http://www.mirvish.com/OurTheatres/Canon.html