We call traditional lime plaster as "Shikkui". The origin of this name came from China long time ago. I've heard, one acient time, they called lyme as "Suk-wui" We put Chinese character on this pronunciation.
By the way, I'm surprised that lyme plaster was used at pyramid in Egypt, the Great Wall in China, Akropolis in Greece, Bombay ruins in Italy as a building material. It has had incredibly long history.
The other day, I visited traditional lyme plaster manufacture, Tagawa Sangyo Co., Ltd., and saw their factory. This company's products are used at most of famous castles in Japan like Osaka castle.
This is the limestone, raw material for lime plaster.
They calcinate this stone in the furnace in soil, which is rare, only two left in Japan, it effectively calcinate the stones. Then mixing rock salt into the furnace to produce fine powder and purelu white lyme plaster. I feel something like dignity from this facility.
Their factory looks like mostly barracks. Their policy let them spend most of cost to research & development. In those barracks, there is a enormous mechanical equipment which has the latest tecnology. You can't figure it out from only seeing the barracks.
Their calcinating furnace shows us they maintain their traditional way and wisdom of the ancients, on the other hand they have brand-new equipments, I mean they have both tradition and tecnology. It is worth seeing it. Located in Tagawa city, Fukuoka Japan.
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