A veritable cookbook of natural plaster recipes and techniques for beautiful, durable finishes

Natural plasters made of clay, lime, and other materials mixed with sand are beautiful building finishes. Fun to work with, low-impact, and allowing infinite creativity, they are high performance and provide proven, centuries-long durability.

Yet until now there's been no resource that has pulled together the best North American plaster recipes and how-to into one place. Essential Natural Plasters covers it all:

• Sourcing and selecting materials, including site-soils
• Clay, lime, and gypsum plasters as well as fibers and amendments
• Interior and exterior use and specialty plasters such as tadelakt for bathrooms
• Preparing substrates, from straw bales and cob to lath and Sheetrock
• How to set up a safe, efficient worksite
• Mixing, testing, tinting, repairing, and applying plasters
• Coveted recipes from leading plasterers in Ontario, Vermont, New Mexico, France, and New Zealand.

Richly illustrated and deeply researched, Essential Natural Plasters is the must-have resource for owner-builders and professionals alike.

Michael Henry is the author of ONTARIO’S OLD GROWTH FORESTS. He is is a botanist and forest ecologist who has spent over two decades studying, writing about, and working to conserve Ontario's old-growth forests. He compiled and maintains the list of Ontario's oldest trees; he designed and constructed the Blueberry Lake Ecology Trails in Temagami; he confirmed that the Jackson Creek forest in Peterborough is an old-growth forest; and he has worked to protect threatened old-growth forests within Algonquin Park, where he and Nate Torenvliet found unprotected forest over 400 years old. He is currently working on a book about old-growth forests in Ontario's Greenbelt. Michael has also worked as a natural builder and is lead author of the book Essential Natural Plasters: A Guide to Materials, Recipes, and Use.

Michael Henry's profile page

Tina Therrien started plastering in 1997 as part of Camel's Back Construction, the first straw bale building company in Ontario. One of the founding members of the Ontario Natural Building Coalition, Tina has made numerous contributions in the natural building world and has plastered in France and Haiti. Passionate about food, gardening, and chickens, Tina lives in a modest timber frame home with her spouse, daughter, their flock of chickens, and their slowly expanding gardens. She is co-author of More Straw Bale Building, and she operates Shelter By Hand, a timber framing company, with her spouse. She lives in Low, Quebec.

Tina Therrien's profile page