As we have explored over the course of this series, many aspects of a building’s decoration and interior go overlooked along with the remarkable people who make it all possible. One element with which Canning Liturgical Arts and John Canning & Co. are intimately familiar is of course, decorative painting.

Traditionally referred to as ornamental painting, this craft refers to the art of transforming the appearance of a surface, often to beautify it and support the surrounding art and architecture. This broad definition does, of course, include woodgraining and marbleizing, but today we will focus on stencils, striping, and trompe l’oeil – some of the earliest examples of ornamental painting.

This practice is as old as art itself – humans have always sought to beautify their sacred interiors even when murals, sculpture, and other fine arts have not been available. The Temple at Karnak from Egypt circa 1250 BC is a good early example of decoration being used to support the architecture and enhance the beauty of a space. Using stripes, thick bands of color, or patterns, decorators would create visual dynamism and motifs relevant to both the building and its purpose. In the case of the Temple at Karnak, the columns were encased in low reliefs of hieroglyphs and symbolic designs aiding the rituals that took place therein and creating an interior entirely set apart in its magnitude of color and decoration.

Owen Jones in the 1854 work, The Grammar of Ornament, traces the progression of styles throughout history, as early as Egyptian to Victorian designs. He argues for a series of propositions that seem to have been self-evident to designers throughout time. Indeed, exquisite ornamental painting was used in the Vatican, Santa Maria Maggiore, and Notre Dame de Paris – all of which largely followed the principles Jones elaborates long before they were ever formally written.

As long as beauty was desired in churches and important spaces, ornamental painting was there to provide it. But decorative painting serves a very practical purpose beyond beauty. As Jones says, decoration is attendant upon architecture – meaning decoration is meant always to support and strengthen architecture, never detract from or obscure it. Well-conceived decorative paint can utterly transform an interior. In the case of a church, the colors and patterns provide symbolism pertinent to the saint or dedicated faith; the variety of pattern and color can create a dynamic or peaceful interior; and the varying tiers of decoration can make a space feel grounded or elevated as needed.

As A.W. Pugin states, “All ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building.” If a building is meant to possess strength, utility, and beauty, what better way to highlight these attributes than with appropriate decoration that supports the strength of a pilaster base, the delicately soaring vaults, and the punctuated windows throughout the walls? 

Before John Canning began the company, his title as given by the Scottish Decorative Trade Institute, Glasgow Stow College of Building, and Glasgow School of Art was “church decorator” – owing to the predominant use of ornamental painting in churches. By the 1960’s, styles had shifted toward modern interiors devoid of decoration, save for the traditional space of a church.

The various processes for decorative painting are largely the same, save for a few new modern materials. Decorative paint encompasses stencil work and trompe l’oeil which often possess similar steps. The key difference is that purely stenciled work remains flat and two-dimensional; whereas trompe l’oeil, as the French name suggests, is intended to trick the eye into thinking paint is three-dimensional using careful shadows and highlights.

Stenciling has many steps: first, a designer has to actually conceive of or have the full pattern set. This means all colors, measurements, and the length of the pattern needs to be known – especially if the pattern is meant to be continuous around a room or architectural feature. Typically, light colors go first and are followed by darker and darker colors so that each coat of paint needs only one coat of paint.

The colors are then separated into plates with corresponding register marks. If a pattern has 3 colors, the decorator must create 3 plates and these need to be sequenced such that, with each new color, the pattern becomes more and more complete with no need for revisions.

These stencil plates are then drawn and cut out, either by hand or with a laser cutter onto sheets of paper, mylar, plastic, or metal. Before mylar and transparent plates, these plates would usually be made of zinc, lined up, and holes would be punched through all the layers to make uniform register marks. These marks, in older stencils, were clearly visible until the very last pass of paint where either they are finally covered or they become part of the design itself.

Today, mylar and transparent plastic sheets allow us to rely on both register marks and visual confirmation. The layers are laid out onto a prepared surface, be it the wall directly or a piece of canvas, and paint is applied, either with small roller brushes or a traditional round stencil brush. After it dries, the next plates are laid over and the process repeats. Naturally, this process is not for the impatient nor the easily distracted, since this requires exact overlay of layers and a patience to allow the paint dry completely before application of another color. 

As for striping – in today’s age of painter’s tape, what could be simpler than a straight line? But we cannot forget that painters have been able to create perfectly straight lines long before tape. By using specific brushes and a steady hand, painters can and still do create even, straight lines – no tape necessary. This may be a standalone stripe or a border of a completed pattern band.

Trompe l’oeil is more involved since you must understand the light and space of the decorated space in order to make consistent, and therefore convincing, shadows and highlights. A design is still mapped out on paper, holes are poked in the paper, and fine charcoal powder is applied to create a sort of outline in a process called pounce. From here, a base coat of the mid-tone is applied, followed by deep shadows then highlights.

In the case of the First Church of Christ in Woodbridge, CT, the trompe l’oeil interior had been poorly done a few decades previously and made little sense in color choice or location of shadows. A decorative artist must have a thorough understanding of color theory to effectively create shadows making any mistake instantly noticeable to the human eye.

Canning artists extrapolated from the originally intended design and created a classical yet fresh design. Directly informed by the shadows and light within the room and classical patterns, the interior was completely reinvigorated using trompe l’oeil moldings.

This work was accomplished only by preserving knowledge of decorative painting and color theory. Jacqueline Riccio and her daughter Zoe are key to Canning’s work and use a mix of purely traditional and more modern techniques. Striping, trompe l’oeil, and the sketching that goes into it remains traditional while the slow-going, less creative work can be completed faster via laser cutters rather than painstakingly by hand with knives. Nonetheless, despite the ability to work faster, knowledge of ornamental painting seems to be increasingly rare. As a third-generation part of the company, Zoe attests: “Any time people ask what I do and I tell them they forget. So much is industrialized nowadays, when you tell people what goes into all this, they don’t realize simply because there isn’t a lot of education – people just don’t realize.”

In a recent lecture about the subject, David Riccio describes ornamental painting as the following: “Decoration is more than just superficial embellishment; it is a powerful form of communication. It’s how we add beauty, meaning, and expression to our built environment, thereby transforming the ordinary into something special.”

When we create a vision for beautifying our interiors, we always wish to include sacred fine art and sculpture where we can, but decoration opens the door to working with the architecture as it is and creating space for the other arts. Zoe says, “I don’t want to say decorative paint is a dying art because it’s not. We’re very much here, but there are not a lot of people who do this and when you don’t know people who do this, you often just don’t think about it.” Yet, whether it is Art Deco, Neoclassical, or Gothic Revival, decorative painting will always have a place in an interior and will readily adapt to the future of design. Even in the modern age, we may still have beautiful buildings so long as we keep in mind strength, utility, and beauty.

We are proud to announce that the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Hanover, PA has won the 2025 Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Award for Restoration!

A landmark of American Catholic history, the Basilica underwent an extraordinary restoration to uncover and conserve its 19th-century Baroque interior, including the largest historic paint exposure the conservation team had ever encountered. The work restored original decorative painting, fine art, woodwork, marble altars, and illusionistic artistry – reviving the sacred space’s spiritual and artistic power.

A mockup, in the architectural arts world, can be an extremely useful tool in achieving the desired end results. It provides a vision of what the historic decoration or architectural finishes will look like after restoration or new design implementation has taken place. Read More

Historic restoration calls for an in-depth study of the building’s history, often through a historic structures report, which typically includes a historic paint analysis, which is a process by which layers of paint are removed to reveal past color schemes, decorative campaigns, and finishes.  Read More