> It’s impossible to mount even lightweight items such as picture frames onto the wall, because even the tiniest hole from nails or the like would crumble and erode into dust.
The trick for this is to just find the stud. Same thing you'd have to do in drywall. For light stuff like photos, you can get away with putting a nail right into the lathe without having to find a stud. If you miss the lathe (you can tell) just move the nail up a half inch.
You really need to predrill through the lath. Old lath is much harder than freshly milled wood. If you hit anywhere off the stud it can cause the lath to flex and break the backside keying off. This leads to delamination with enough accumulated damage.
> Old lath is much harder than freshly milled wood
That is my piece of advice for anybody who is buying a house at least a hundred years old. Old lath is like iron, and you can do more damage than you expect if you just try to put a screw into it without pre-drilling.
The trick for this is to just find the stud. Same thing you'd have to do in drywall. For light stuff like photos, you can get away with putting a nail right into the lathe without having to find a stud. If you miss the lathe (you can tell) just move the nail up a half inch.