Keeping the arts alive

Thomas Brown learned his trade just out of Wando High School. The plasterer's dad arranged for him to apprentice with a friend who was foreman at the Ball Plaster Company.

The plasterer warmly recalls that foreman Henry Brown (no relation) had a no-nonsense style, like that of a drill sergeant.

"Henry was the type of fella that when he told you something and you did it wrong, he'd yell," says Thomas Brown, now 53. "But that was just something to make you get it right. He'd tell me to pick up that hawk and trowel and try to learn. So every time I'd get a chance, I'd pick 'em up and try to spread that mud."

Today, Thomas Brown still plasters with lime-based mortar and hand tools. He seals cracks in the walls of Charleston's centuries-old buildings using the same techniques the late Henry Brown, one of the city's leading ornamental plasterers, taught him nearly 35 years ago.

And, he wants the tradition to continue.

"I got two grandsons and I am trying to learn them the trade," Thomas Brown says. "I take them every now and then whenever I get a good-size job. I got one of them, looks like he'll stick with it. But the other one, I don't know. To be honest with you, you don't have too many young folks into this. You got a lot of old plasterers around here and a few in their 40s."

Today, Brown works with Robert Johnson, who is concerned that they might someday face a shortage of craftsmen who can repair its stock of old buildings properly.

Johnson, owner of Robert Johnson Masonry, has a civil engineering degree but prefers working with his hands.

Johnson first worked on older peninsula structures three decades ago, he says. Working on them required taking the time to do things properly. Then, there was the challenge of matching repairs with work done more than a century before. Those things really appealed to him.

"An old man told me about 30 years ago, 'These old buildings in Charleston will always need repair. If you take your time and do it right, you will always have work.' Sometimes you have to incorporate with the new with the old, but you want to make sure it works.

"You can almost look at the old buildings and know that somebody new has worked on it," says Johnson, who likes to plaster historic buildings when the opportunity arises. "You can see the patches. It just looks atrocious. By the same token, there have been a lot of repairs and you can't tell because somebody took the time to do it right."

"It's a dying craft, I believe," says Johnson. However, he says traditional methods being taught at the American College of the Building Arts could keep an interest in learning and using traditional methods alive in Charleston.

"They are teaching the right way," Johnson says. "I don't think they are taking any shortcuts.

Building arts pros

Kevin Meek moved here from Washington and formed his company in 2006. Meek, who has a fine arts degree, collaborates with local plasterers, metal workers, woodworkers and other craftsmen through companies such as Robert Johnson Masonry.

"We are a construction company, but we are building arts professionals first," Meek says. "There is a local grapevine of trusted craftsmen and these guys pass the information down to their sons. Especially African-American craftsmen, they really hand it down."

Meek, who works both on new and old homes, says he enjoys the process of working on older homes.

He likes knowing that when he removes plaster from a wall, the two by four is actually going to be two inches by four inches, not shaved down, like modern ones.

He also enjoys discovering remnants from the past in houses such as wiring and lighting methods that no longer are used.

But sometimes there are problems he finds distressing, he says.

"Immediately after Hugo ... the quality control was not there because of the volume of work that had be done," Meek says.

The contractor says there would be fewer structural problems in some downtown houses if there had been time to do the work correctly.

"I would like to see the raising of the bar for historic preservation work in Charleston reach more areas than those on the peninsula."

Future crafts people

Guyton Ash is a senior timber framing student at the American College of the Building Arts.

Ash is fascinated with the idea of framing a structure with traditional joinery, no nails or fasteners. His respect for building trades took root when he worked as a stone mason in Connecticut.

He says the college provides him and other young crafts people an opportunity that is valuable and rare.

"It's important to be able to go back in the past and study the evolution and history of the trades," Ash says. "You look to the past to be able to understand why things were done, then you begin to understand where they're going. It gives you the tools to be the best craftsman you can be."

Ash wants his future to include timber framing for preservation projects and for new construction. He looks forward to the days he spends in the college's workshop doing intense work in compound joinery.

"It's an important part of the timber framing curriculum at the college because a lot of the roof structures have compound joints that can be very complex," says Ash.

Ash understands why some people are concerned there might not be enough younger people interested in the traditional methods to maintain older structures. He says the concern is justified and that as a professional, he will work to educate people about the need for the traditional approach through trade unions.

"I believe there should be a concern," he says. "Right now (however), there are plenty of competent craftsmen in Charleston who do wonderful work.

Reach Wevonneda Minis at 937-5705.