The Architect & The Artisan – A Collaboration
All buildings, regardless of scope, are a collaboration of skilled specialists: architect, engineers, contractor and the trades. And as craftsmen we can add value from the start. In short, our job is to inform the brief…and enhance the result through our decades of experience can help inform the specification process with a deep and expert knowledge of materials and techniques.
Elsewhere on this site, there is a brief introduction to our Consultancy Service. The points raised there are all applicable to the work we do with architects, but because architects have so central a role in so much of what we do, we have expanded here how that relationship can work and the benefits it can bring….
The Potential of Expertise
Our involvement gives a project access to a wealth of specialist options and opportunities:
- We have worked with an extensive variety of marble, granite and other stones cut in quarries from England to Europe, Asia to the Americas
- We have cleaned, restored, replaced, pointed and repointed scores of different brick types, each offering unique properties of performance, colour, texture and form
- Our understanding of and familiarity with stucco, render and mortars, spans the centuries from Palladio’s traditional mix to the latest acrylic alternatives
The Ability to Enhance
Craftsmanship is as functional and practical as it is aesthetic and decorative:
- We understand how the constituent elements of mortars, stone and substrates interact. If you want stucco or render (or pointing for that matter) of a particular shade or colour, we can create it…and, importantly, mix it so that it applies effectively to the substrate
- We have over a dozen pointing styles at our finger tips including the familiar, traditional and artisanal, each one subtly different, each one capable of enriching the building’s aesthetic and extending its durability
And New Build too…
Because we also work on the country’s heritage stock; because we also use tools whose design has barely changed in a millennium and because the very idea of craftsmanship is ancient, some are tempted to consign us to Merrie England. But craftsmanship is always of its time. Yes, we restore the past, but, like all craftsmen before us, we also create the present, the new. True Craftsmanship is never pastiche, never out-of-date.
Our modern craftsmanship therefore embraces the latest technology with the same enthusiasm and for the same reason it still picks up hammer, chisel and trowel – they work. And they enable us to deliver exemplary results whether it’s a Tudor palace or a cutting-edge New Build.
