burned in a kiln and ground to a fine powder; invented around 1840, it sets to an exceptionally hard state. It is typically used without the addition of animal glues. Marezzo scagliola is often called American scagliola because of its widespread use in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Slabs of Marezzo scagliola may be used as table tops. When set, scagliola is hard enough to be turned on a lathe to form vases, balusters and finials. History While there is evidence of scagliola decoration in ancient Roman architecture, scagliola decoration became popular in Italian Baroque buildings in the 17th century, and was imitated throughout Europe until the 19th century. Superb altar frontals using this technique are to be found at the Certosa di Padula in the Campania, Southern Italy. An early use of scagliola in England is in a fireplace at Ham House, Surrey, which was brought from Italy along with the window sill in the reign of Charles II. This employs the use of a scagliola background which was then cut into to lay in the design. In 1761, a scagliolista, Domenico Bartoli, from Livorno arrived in London and was employed by William Constable of Burton Constable in Yorkshire. Here he produced two chimneypieces in white marble inlaid with the scagliola embellishments directly into cut matrices in the marble. Apart from the protective edges of altars at Padula this seems to be the first use of this technique. In 1766 he went into partnership with Johannes Richter, possibly from Dresden, who may have brought a young Pietro Bossi with him. The name Bossi is associated with a family of Northern Italian scagliolisti. Bartoli supplied table tops to Ireland and one chimneypiece at Belvedere House in Dublin could be attributed to Richter. Their styles are very different. There is little evidence that either of them came to Ireland. Pietro Bossi arrived in Dublin in 1784 and probably died there in 1798. He produced a number of chimneypieces in Dublin of very good quality. Scagliola inlay proved to be desirable in Ireland and there appears to be a continuation long after it became unfashionable in England. In 1911, Herbert Cescinsky, in English Furniture remarked that scagliola had been popular in Dublin fifty years before. This would explain one at 86, Stephen's Green, clearly an 18th. Century chimneypiece, which has been later embellished in the mid