Hansen Handcrafted Finishes

TADELAKT-THE FINEST OF LIME PLASTERS.

2009-04-08T21:34:00.006-06:00

Tadelakt is an ancient plastering technique known by Europeans and North Africans for more than a thousand years. Originally used for waterproofing cisterns and steam baths (also known as hamams), people soon discovered its irresistible aesthetic qualities and started to use it as a decorative finish.
Tadelakt creates a surface with a lot of depth, a subtle shine and a natural color variation depending on how it is applied and polished. The plaster has an infinite number of ways in which it can be finished, slightly undulated from being polished the traditional way with a stone, distressed, slightly pitted, multicolored, stenciled, decorated with sgraffito techniques, or completely uniform. One of the remarkable characteristics is that however much life the surface has, it always feels like the finest silk to touch. as always we use product from Stucco Italiano because it gives our costumers the finest results.
We ask you, our customers to tell us what you want , what is your dream.
Please come and visit our booth at the Four Corners Green Living Expo, on the 18th and 19th of april 2009, at the Durango fairgrounds Colorado.(For those of you who live in Telluride, please come down, it is only a two hour drive)
We will be showing Tadelakt, venetian plasters in many variations and American Clay plaster finishes.
We are looking forward to seeing you.
Lars Hansen.

About our company.

2009-04-07T14:31:00.002-06:00

This posting is a little history behind Hansen Handcrafted Finishes, for the blogging folks that have not discovered our web site yet.

I grew up in old Europe, in towns with narrow streets and cobble stones, old houses and towers mostly finished with lime. I might have been 4 years old when I first lime washed with my Grandfather on the homestead and my fascination with the natural materials never left me. After working on stunning castles, manors, and cathedrals, I came to the USA where I founded Hansen Handcrafted Finishes with a commitment to providing our customers with that European timeless quality, the best of craftsmanship and all natural plasters and paints. On this continent with a lot of Faux Finishes being applied, we have found a solid platform of costumers for the real thing. We apply venetian lime plasters, tadelakt, clay plasters, and natural paints, providing green healthy finishes in traditional and contemporary homes throughout this continent and Europe, with our primary customer base in Durango, Telluride and the rest of Colorado.
Our company has the background and the quality, the only left for you is to ask yourself, "what do I want?" Dream it up and give us a call.
Lars Hansen President and founder of Hansen Handcrafted Finishes.
1 970 247 9702

Stucco Italiano Denmark.

2009-02-06T11:36:00.006-07:00

As a part of my trip to my home country Denmark this winter, I went to visit the folks from Stucco Italiano there, Ole and Helene koeie. They welcome me in to their home, office, and training facility on the beach of northern Zealand (Sjaelland). We had a great conversation about craftsmanship and plasters, while they showed me around their home, of course it had been plastered by Giovanni Polistena with wonderful materials from Stucco Italiano. Two things I really enjoyed hearing was how Giovanni always talks very highly of Aaron Cohen from SAFS, and also that Mr Polistena and a crew is going to apply roughly 1900 square feet of venetian plaster in Amalienborg castle, which is the residence of the royal danish family.
Lars Hansen.

American Clay workshop in Denmark.

2009-02-04T04:39:00.007-07:00

On the 22nd, 23nd and 24th of January I conducted the first American Clay workshop in Europe, more specifically in my home country Denmark. I have for a while been working on setting up my dear friends and colleagues in the field of working with natural materials Flemming and Karen Abrahamsson from the company Fornyet Energi, as the European distributor of American Clay. the enormous amount of foot work has panned out very well, and the workshop was a very positive experience for everybody. The participants were all people having experience with clay in some form, clay builders, clay plasterers and masons, this will ensure a high quality installation to properly show off the capacity of the product, and we will probably not have to wait long to see pictures, since the first customer booked an installation just from seeing the base coats during the first day of the workshop. The house in which we held the workshop is from 1919 and was added on to last year, it is still under construction, and we are looking forward to displaying pictures of the finished project.
Five people had allready signed up before we were done with the workshop, and I am very excited to conduct the next one, and continue to be part of reintroducing clay as a building material in Europe.
I am here also bringing you a photo of the first American Clay wall in Europe, the wall was an exterior wall, but now enclosed by glass functioning as a sun room. It was very bumpy and uneven, and that being part of the beauty of the old farm houses i kept just enough of that to make the wall "shine" when covered with two coats of Enjarre, and burnt just a little bit with a steel trowel.
Lars Hansen.

The round tower in copenhagen.

2009-01-13T06:26:00.005-07:00

Rundetaarn as it is called in danish, is the oldest functioning observatory in Europe. The tower built by the Danish king Christian IV in 1642 is 36 meters tall, which back then was enormous. What makes it unique in European architecture is that it is round , and even more so that instead of a stair case, it has a spiral walk way winding around a hollow column 7 1/2 times, measuring 209 meters from bottom to top. The entire spiral is constructed from brick vaults plastered with lime ,and then lime washed with pit lime. As allways this gives a very special light (that is when the lime wash has been applied properly to achieve the very intricate crystalline structure, necessary to make the pit lime last and perform its maximum.)
Today only amateur astronomers and regular visitors use the tower for its original purpose, and since the professionals left the tower, it has been used for a variety of things, one being a uni cycle race, maybe inspired by the Russian czar Peter the great, who in 1716 rode his horse to the top.
I visited Rundetaarn on the 8th of January 2009, and i can recommend visiting if you should ever visit the old Copenhagen.
Lars Hansen.

Vikings

2009-01-03T01:00:00.006-07:00

Most people do not associate vikings with plasters, but nevertheless most viking houses were plastered inside. The mix was a dung-clay mix, and spread over a lattice work made of sticks. This provided not only draft proofing, but also temperature and humidity control as we know clay plasters do in today's houses.
Most vikings were farmers when they were not raiding, but what we usually hear about my ancestors are stories about their barbaric warfare. And with good reason, the vikings were truly great, not in height but in how far they were able to reach and conquer. These squat little human beings (seldom measuring more than 5 1/2 feet ) traveled far. The Swedish mainly went through the Russian rivers and as far as Greece, and the Danish and Norwegian vikings went more south and westerly to places such as Ireland, England, Spain, Italy, France and even as far as to the part of north America which today is U.S.A. Some of these destinations became permanent settlements such as the Normandy, which was clearly given its name by the men from the north (nor man).
I just visited the viking ship museum in Roskilde, where a mix of ancient and recently built ships are displayed. These ships are a major piece in finding out how the vikings were able to travel as far as they did,since the common long ship were quite commonly reaching top speeds of 14 to 15 knots.
Lars Hansen.

Cathedral of Roskilde.

2008-12-30T09:24:00.007-07:00

I am still in denmark, and have visited a lot of old historical buildings and sites, one of them is Roskilde domkirke, a huge cathedral built of about three million large red bricks. Towering in to the sky stunningly displaying its architecture and beauty, it was added to UNESCO's list of the worlds most precious cultural assets in 1995.
The first church on the site was built by one of the greatest viking kings of the north Harold Bluetooth who died in 985. As is the tradition today, Harold Bluetooth was Buried There, and since then the cathedral has been rebuilt several times, and have with that also grown remarkably.
The inside of the cathedral is plastered with lime, and lime washes makes stunning backdrops for intricate frescoes.
Presently approximately one half of the roof is being rebuilt, and just to give you an idea of the size of this project, I can tell you that I spoke with a friend and colleague who has been involved in the project. He told me that the enormous scaffold crew had scheduled 5 weeks just to take down the scaffolding.
Being there is such an awe striking feeling, and I am very happy to share a little of it with you.
Read more about this architectural master piece.
Lars Hansen

Craftsmanship.

2008-12-28T13:06:00.005-07:00

I chose this first posting on our blog to be about good craftsmanship, simply because it is the essence of and the one factor that can sustain the plaster trade.
I'm writing this as I'm seated in a warm and cozy farmhouse in Denmark, I am home to visit family and to teach the first American Clay workshop in Europe. Being here, it is not hard at all to find inspiration on this particular topic since craftsmanship here is very deeply rooted and extremely organized in the trades.
I have been through some dictionaries to find the root of the word. Here is the Oxford English Dictionaries crack at it:
Craft: An activity involving skill in making things by hand.
Craftsman: A worker skilled in a particular craft.
And here is how the Gyldendal's Red Danish Dictionary explains the Danish word Haandvaerk- which means craft related to the trades, and the work of the hand.
Haandvaerk: (From old Nordic: Handaverk, German: Handwerk, English: Handiwork)
Spending time everyday plastering and also teaching workshops has offered some time to ponder what the word and concept, craftsmanship, requires to be successfully applied. And also why it goes hand in hand with quality.
The soul of the craftsmanship lies in the personal ownership of a larger process...from thought and choice of tools and materials to the execution of the project. For me this means everything from meeting with customers and other contractors making sample boards, and tweaking finishes to meet and exceed expectations. The joy of pulling out my tools, to carrying out the chosen finishes with that very special attention it takes to make a truly unique and flawless finish.
I like what I do and I like to do it well. I have great respect for my trade and the materials I work with. These things alone are some great circumstances for being able to deliver a good result, but are still not enough to guarantee it. There is also the factor ,of whether the subcontractor scheduled before you did his/her job properly, and the subcontractor before that. That is not always the case, as a matter of fact the opposite is quite common, and there is only one person to pay for it. The costume price through bidding has gone up as a consequence of responsible quality craftsmanship having diminished. It is very clear to me that the overall cost of construction could be less If everybody involved took the time and pride required to do their job right, an did not try to see if they could get away with leaving some of their job of for the next subcontractor to fix before the start of their project.
Stories Like this is quite common when people hear what I do for work, "Wow, so your are a plasterer, that is a dying art. When i had our house plastered I could watch him for hours so swift and elegant, there cant be many of you left of you out there??? do you have a card? ".With stories like that , and coming from a long family tradition of working by hand, it is very clear to me that there is an extremely old instinctual fascination with watching the craftsmen do their thing. A deep appreciation leaving the craftsman with even more obligation to carrying on the tradition of this particular trade. And with this being said. If you are a craftsman reading this, I can only encourage you to encourage others and do your own very best for the good of everybody. Bearing in mind that contracts and layers should not decide what craftsmanship is or is not. And if you are not a craftsman, I will encourage you to take time to enjoy watching craftsmen work next time you get a chance.
Lars Hansen.