My friend David Hayles, who has died aged 78, was a decorative plasterer whose creations graced interiors across the globe, from Buckingham Palace to Disney World. In particular he became a master in scagliola, a plaster technique that simulates decorative marble. He taught its intricacies on courses and wrote a definitive book on the subject, The Magic of Scagliola, which was published in 2016.
David was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, to an army officer, Basil Hayles, who was a descendant of Robert Walpole, British prime minister from 1721 to 1742, and Jean (nee Prior), sister of the Conservative politician Jim Prior. After attending Haileybury in Hertfordshire he arrived at the University of Bristol in 1965 to study architecture, but dropped out to seek adventure, leaving for the hippy trail to India.
On returning to Bristol he stood in the 1971 city council elections as the first and only candidate for the Bristol Dwarf party on a pro-environment, pro-cycling and anti-car manifesto, also arguing for the legalisation of cannabis. After trying his hand at various trades and ventures, including snake-catching and plumbing, in 1978 he moved into decorative plastering and founded Hayles & Howe, a Bristol-based company. The firm grew over the years and opened a workshop in Baltimore in the US.
A heart attack allied to serious brain damage forced him to step down from running Hayles & Howe in 1999, but as soon as he was able he resumed his eclectic lifestyle, living in Oxford in New York state with his second wife, Angelique Bakaylar, whom he married in 2004. David built their geodesic domed house using old beer cans and tyres, while continuing to teach and undertake plastering restoration jobs.
In 2018, after surviving throat cancer and the removal of his voice box, he went on a 20,000 mile solo round-the-world bike ride that began at the Reform Club in London, taking a year and a half to complete. At the age of 76 he then set himself another challenge – to cycle from top to bottom of the American continent, starting in Alaska. He had to return home three times to recover from accidents, and his adventures finally ran out in La Paz, Bolivia, where he died.
A man with many eccentricities, he was entertaining company and had a store of outlandish stories, many of which were related in his 2016 autobiography, Confessions of an Ornamental Plasterer. Life was never dull with him around. He is survived by Angelique and by two sons, Olly and Jim, from his first marriage to Caroline (nee Grice), which ended in divorce.
