Decorative Plastering on the Isle of Skye: The Story Behind Skye Surface Design. Part 1
How a career in plastering, a love of art and one unexpected job on Skye led me home.
Staffin, a small locality on the north end of Skye, is where I’m lucky enough to call home.
Windswept ancient ridgelines, famous landmarks like the Old Man of Storr, the Quiraing and the Trotternish Ridge tower above. The sea and black sand beach are visible from the window. The love for this place is undeniable.
My aim with Skye Surface Design is to bring beautiful, bespoke surfaces into homes and workspaces across Skye, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. Skye is home to some of the most beautiful new builds, traditional Scottish homes and croft houses, and I want to create finishes that work with the architecture of these buildings rather than against it.
Using natural materials and Venetian plaster techniques, I create surfaces that are designed specifically for the space they’re in. Finishes that feel connected to the landscape around us, rather than simply being something placed onto a wall or surface. I want to elevate the spaces my clients live and work in.
I believe interiors should feel connected to the people who exist within them. The surfaces around us influence how we experience a space; the texture beneath our hands, the way light moves across a surface, the warmth of natural materials.
My approach is centred around creating interiors that feel timeless, natural, personal and crafted.
The Quiraing is a landform on the eastern face of Meall na Suiramach, the northernmost summit of the Trotternish escarpment on the Isle of Skye.
Before Skye
Alas, bonnie wee Scotland wasn’t the start of my story.
I grew up in Leeds, West Yorkshire. At 18, I attended Leeds Building College, where I undertook a three-year National Diploma in Solid Plastering alongside an apprenticeship with Leeds City Council. That’s where I learnt the foundations of the trade. Over the following couple of years, I continued developing my skills before venturing into self-employment, working alongside my good friend Ben. Together, we worked on commercial and domestic jobs for the next few years, building experience across all sorts of projects and situations, until Covid hit.
What a strange time Covid was for everyone.
With the world suddenly slowing down and all of us spending so much time thinking about lockdown and thinking about life, I started looking again at the things that made me happy.
I’d always fallen back into my love of creating art. I left school with an A in A-Level Fine Art — do A-Levels even still exist?
I’d always enjoyed drawing, painting and making things, but I’d never considered that there might be a way to bring that part of me into my plastering career.
Then, one night while looking online for inspiration for marbling techniques, I stumbled across two words I’d never heard before:
Venetian plaster.
I looked further into it and immediately liked what I saw. I started wondering whether I could marry my love of art and creating with the trade I’d already spent years learning.
The more I looked, the more interested I became.
I found training courses in Wakefield at a company called Stucco & Stucco. At the time, I had no idea that these guys were leading the way in Venetian plaster in the UK, or how lucky I was that they happened to be only about 40 minutes from my house.
I contacted them and booked onto the next available course, which at the time was a couple of months away, as Covid restrictions were slowly being lifted.
One training course led into another, which led into another. I couldn’t get enough. I turned the box room in my house into my first little "studio", bought an easel and started practising. I experimented with different materials, colours and techniques, trying to build on what I’d learnt during the courses.
My first studio in my box room in Leeds.
Looking back at those first pieces now, I can see just how much I’ve learnt since then.
Understanding how materials behave, how light affects a finish, how different substrates respond and how timing can completely change the character of a surface all came through years of practice, experimentation and experience.
There were plenty of mistakes along the way, of course. That’s part of learning any craft.
But each one taught me something.
Over the next few years, I kept learning, progressing and experimenting. I made trips to Venice to learn from masters of the craft and met some great people within the industry along the way.
Slowly and consistently, I started developing my own way of working.
One of my first jobs, applying metallic paint.
Enjoying a water taxi up the grand canal on my first trip to Venice.
Venetian plaster was only the beginning. As my understanding of decorative surfaces grew, so did my interest in other materials and techniques; lime, clay, microcement, mineral finishes, metallics and ways of combining different materials to create something that isn’t simply off the shelf.
That’s still something I enjoy today.
I’m always learning, experimenting and trying to understand what a material can do.
And eventually, that journey brought me to Skye…