Material Honesty on the WebTo cover brick with plaster, and this plaster with fresco, is perfectly legitimate… But to cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood; and is just as contemptible a procedure as the other is noble. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 1849 Material honesty—the idea that a substance should be itself, rather than mimic
