ur repertoire includes a wide range of traditional and modern, decorative, painting and plastering techniques. Not being content with excelling in trompe l'œil, faux bois, marbleizing, faux stone block, striæ, crosshatching, Venetian Stucco, encaustic, etc, we are constantly experimenting with materials to create new finishes. Often these invented finishes are in response to an unusual request or are inspired by ideas shared with our clients. We enjoy being creative and regard no challenge as too large or too small.

Below are brief descriptions of some of our principal techniques accompanied by an illustration. A larger gallery of selected projects can be accessed by clicking on these pictures or by perusing our portfolio.

Stucco Veneziano is a beautiful decorative plaster finish that was used extensively in the Venetian Palazzos of the Renaissance, although the technique has earlier origins in the encaustic plaster finishes applied by Roman artisans in Pompeii and elsewhere. The architect Carlo Scarpa has used Venetian Stucco finishes in many of his buildings and is credited with reviving interest in the technique. We have applied this finish in ultra-modern New York apartments as well as Italianate villas in Palm Beach Florida.

We formulate each batch of our pigmented lustro plaster for a specific site, which ensures that each finish we create is unique. It is applied in many layers with thousands of strokes of the artisan's spatula. This forms a delicate overlay of subtle patterns that contribute to the transparent variations of the finish. The final coat is burnished to a light sheen to reveal the crystalline depth of the smooth stucco.

Like Stucco Veneziano, this technique was also extensively used by the Romans and Greeks and was applied in decorative mural paintings and to wall surfaces. Encaustic is basically a heated pigmented wax - usually beeswax - that is applied in multiple layers with a spatula. The final coat is burnished to a sheen. Due to the transparency of the wax and the high loading of pigment in the medium, finishes of intense colouration and optical depth can be achieved with this technique. The finish is physically softer than Venetian Stucco plaster, though both finishes are long-lasting.

A fancy term for painting (or sculpture) that creates the illusion of reality, usually in a decorative or architectural manner. Our commissions have included large scale coffered ceilings, as well as smaller grisaille in the manner of Artus Quellin or Grinling Gibbons. People are often so deceived by our work they cannot believe that what they see is not a stone relief but a painting!

We'll faux anything that stands still long enough - but we excel at marbleizing. In fact our work is on public display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC - that is - on the pedestals supporting the artworks in the Petrie Courtyard. The curators at the Met just loved to tax our genius by requesting us to duplicate all sorts of exotic stones.

Our faux stone blocks are quite different from the standard. We treat each block as a separate painting, building a painterly tonal conversation with rectangles over the whole wall. This application enhances any interior, commercial or residential. In fact a lot or our limestone finish is also on display in the Metropolitan Museum, NYC.

We sometimes find it difficult to convince people that the doors or panels we have painted are just faux and not the real thing. We have taken whole libraries that were originally painted a plain colour and transformed them into rich faux wood panels. We finish with layers of clear varnish that lends visual depth to our fine brush work. The technique may have originated as a working class art-form, and it was certainly used by engineers to decorate the interior of the engine cabins of steam trains in England. Many working people also decorated the front doors of there homes this way. Today, it is widely used in America's most palatial homes.

Striæ is created by simply dragging a dry brush through a wet glaze leaving fine stripes on the surface. Of course there is much more to it than that. In order to create straight controlled lines over a large surface one must attain a calm Zen-like state. This is especially important with crosshatching which is a double striæ overlaid at right angles. Imagine, you are pulling a brush through a glaze that is drying and you still have another 20 feet to go … The slightest panic and you have made a nice drawing of a donkey's hind leg!

Striæ can be used on walls, though it also provides an elegant edge on doorframes and trim (skirting boards, cornices). Crosshatching is wonderful on walls and panels. We have produced very interesting crosshatched glazes by using special light reactive pigments and matching the colours of each layer to fabrics the designer has chosen for the room.

The kinds of effects that can be achieved with oil or water based glazes are limited only by the artist imagination. (Duh - what's a glaze? ans. transparent paint medium). Among the more traditional finishes are Stippling, Sponging and Rag rolling. Stippling on large services is usually created by stamping a large block brush evenly over the wet glaze. The result should be a very fine and even visual texture. Sponging is a similar technique, except that sea sponges are used and the effect is more irregular, but charming, nevertheless. To create an effect of bunched fabric, a twisted rag is used and rolled through wet glaze. Other patterns can be created by stamping the glaze with a variety of materials, such as plastic wrap. Sophisticated effects and patterns may be achieved by using some or all of these techniques in combination.