Quirky!

An original feature found in this apartment are the rounded edges on all of the fire breasts and two doorways. They have all been filled in and then wallpaper covered over them. I have painstakingly removed the filled in edges and sanded the staff beads. The plasterer has then had the challenge of cutting back in the quirks….not easy! It certainly takes an experienced and talented plasterer to achieve it. So what is a staff and quirk?….

A staff bead, is a 1 inch dowel with approx 1/3rd shaved off the back, this is set on an external corner by a joiner on site, fastened to wooden plugs which were set into the brick or wood frame. Plaster was run up to the corner then “quirked”. In architecture a quirk is a small ‘V’ shaped channel used to insulate and give relief to a convex rounded moulding, it is used to hide the eventual small crack that will form between the staff bead and the plaster.