| Artisanal Finishes |
| About Our Business Twenty-five years ago, Shannon McGee walked the streets of the medieval French town of Foix where he was teaching English. Though he visited museums, castles and ancient villages all over Europe, he never really thought of becoming an artist. Upon returning stateside, he began working for a large corporation. Ten years later, he left the office and opened an antiques store on Greenville's up and coming Main Street. Two years later, he left a thriving Main Street for the West End; however, 1998 turned out to be a few years too early. The move proved fruitful in a different way as McGee found a demand for his artistic talent of transforming drab concrete walls and floors into something special. Shannon began by using artist pigments and stains to decorate concrete floors and glazes and earth pigments on walls. Soon, customers were asking him to create the same finishes in their homes and businesses. Not content with the fake (faux) look of acrylic glazes and paints, he began using real Italian marble plasters to try to capture the true look of the castles and villas he had experienced in Europe. Soon, he developed a process that creates a finish that has layers of depth and age like real stone that cannot be duplicated by synthetic products. At Artisanal Finishes, the product offerings include real marble plasters, dolomite-enhanced lime plasters and polymer-modified cement floor coatings. |
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| Marble plasters date back to Roman times. It is a lime putty base to which finely ground limestone and marble dust are added. The material can be troweled in thin layers, translucent enough to show through. Unlike acrylic paste "Venetian plasters", real Italian marble plasters can be colored with natural earth pigments and acid stains for an aged fossil stone or Tuscan look. They can also be integrally pigmented to match any color palette and honed with a diamond polisher or waxed for a modern look. The ancient Venetians adopted marble plaster as an alternative to using heavy stone and marble. Able to be applied over any stable, modern wall materials, real marble plaster is composed of, at least, forty percent marble dust and, like real stone, is cold to the touch. Whether polished with a diamond pad or honed with a stainless steel trowel, the depth, strength and richness of real marble plaster is unrivaled by acrylic pastes, paints or wallcoverings. |
| Artisanal Finishes can create travertine, marble, fossil stone, granite and stone block finishes. The artistic possibilities include relief stencils (like glazed art pottery), arches, columns, impressionist-style wall murals and frescoes, framed artwork, embedded fossils, gemstones, and geodes. The processes are obviously more costly than painted acrylic finishes and sponge painting, but are gorgeously realistic at all angles and distances. The work of Artisanal Finishes is difficult to capture on film, print or the internet and is best experienced in person. Although our finishes are found in homes and businesses from Mt. Mitchell to Mt. Pleasant, like : The Cliffs at Glassy The Reserve at Keowee Allegheny in Simpsonville, SC The Chateau at Cool Place (near Mt Mitchell) llyn strong and Brad Pine residence in (Downtown Greenville) Montebello in Greenville, SC Jane Asher cottage (Hendersonville, NC) Ric Standridge Loft at the West End Fieldhouse in Greenville, the following commercial locations are accessible to the general public : Mia Dimora Interiors on Coffee St in downtown Greenville, SC llyn strong fine jewelry on Main Street in Greenville, SC Lu Bagwell Interiors at Keowee Falls Village on Hwy 11 in Salem, SC The Brown Street Club in downtown Greenville Dianne Riley Law Firm on Whitsett St in Greenville Sushi Koji across from the Hyatt in Greenville Palmetto Home and Garden at Laurens and Woodruff Rd in Greenville |
