Traditional Building
Replication Moldings
June 2020
J.P. Weaver, who’s products have been installed in a number of prominent public buildings, including New You City’s Plaza Hotel and California’s Sacramento State Capitol, has been designing and manufacturing decorative moldings since 1914.
The company, which was founded by the company’s namesake British gilder who set up shop in Los Angeles to create ornament for furniture and picture frames, offers three products: plaster casts, composition ornament and pieces made of a proprietary polyester resin called Petitsin Flex Molding.
“We differ from other ornamental molding companies in that we provide a lot of design assistance,” says Stephanie Croce, co-owner and senior designer. “We also are one of the few companies in the world that still makes composition ornament, which dates to the early Italian Renaissance. We use our own family recipe.
The company, whose work is done on-site by 15 artisans in a 10,000-square-foot studio in Glendale, California, has an extensive collection of designs: some 250 styles of plaster casts, over 10,000 examples of composition ornament and about 2,000 molds made of a propriety resin-based compound called Petitsin Flex Molding.
“Petitsin, which is very flexible, allows us to do things that would be difficult or costly to execute in plaster,” Corce says. “It has the same finely carved appearance of plaster. It’s also less costly to make and install.”
Croce notes that J.P. Weaver’s architect clients generally specify custom cast-plaster ornament for their projects. “Sometimes, depending on the design, we suggest that they use a cast-plaster profile with Petitsin details,” she says.
J.P. Weaver also creates custom ornament and does local restoration projects for private homes. “We go the the site,” Croce says, “to see what the existing ornament is and what condition it is in. We remove and clean pieces so we can make a mold and cast new ones.”
Croce likens molding design to arranging letter in an alphabet. “You put pieces together to form beautiful words,” she says.
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