Renowned Artistic Designer Lands In The Perfect Location
Stephanie Poe Found What Is Now One Of The Top Design Firms In South Carolina From Traveling The World And Learning From The Best
“In Charleston, we have so much history,” Stephanie Poe, founder of one of the top design firms in Charleston, SC, says. “And I’m in awe that so many people here are interested in preserving that history.”
Stephanie believes that she’s landed in the perfect spot to pursue her interests in painting, crafting and interior design. “I live in the best place in the country for what I do,” she tells The Buzz. “The style here is magnificent, so elegant, and so many historic finishes.”
Those historic finishes are among Poe’s specialties. “One of my first jobs downtown was doing wood grain on a door,” she says. “That was historically correct for Charleston. The wealthy homeowners in the 1800s brought in top European artists to decorate their homes. In a lot of cases we are uncovering and restoring their work, recreating the original design, patching it as needed.”
Stephanie first came to Charleston during college, when her parents relocated there. “I met my husband, became a mom, and here I am almost 30 years later,” she says. “I decided to find a way to make a living and be a stay home mom; I’d always been very artistic, very crafty. There were so many houses being restored here, so I taught myself to execute finishes from the 1800s.”
From wood grain, Poe branched out into faux finishes that look like marble, hand-painted walls and floors, and Italian plastering. Her studies have taken her all over the world, learning from the field’s top masters.
“My first formal training was with Mike McNeil, a Canadian artist known for his wood graining and marbling techniques,” she recalls. “I had already worked on some of the most exquisite homes in Charleston, but I wasn’t sure how I would be received. Turned out that he was self-taught as well, starting out painting signs that looked like wood. After that, I didn’t fear training with masters anywhere.”
Stephanie traveled to Rome and then Venice to study the historical methods used in Italian plastering. “We have a lot of lime in Charleston,” she says, “lime paint, lime washes, high polish plaster finishes. Plaster likes our climate. It’s a lot like Venice, which has a lot of plaster for the same reason. The lime in everything keeps mold from happening.”
Poe also had the unique opportunity to study in Versailles, France, with two of that country’s best artists, learning the techniques of trompe l'oeil. “It means to ‘trick the eye,’ and makes flat painting look three-dimensional,” she explains.
Today, Stephanie Poe’s work is all over Charleston, but you might not be able to pick it out. Her goal in restoration work is for the observer not to be able to tell where the historic finish ends and her recreation begins.
“I painted a fireplace to look like marble and the only way to tell where the marble stopped and my painting began was to touch it,” she says. “The paint wasn’t cold; the marble was.”
Another recent commission took her to Sullivan’s Island where the owner of the Obstinate Daughter had run out of old barn wood to finish his bar. “I faux finished the newer wood to look exactly like the old,” Stephanie says. “The waiters don’t even know.”
Her plastering skills came into play during the renovation of the historic building at 492 King Street into a restaurant. “The walls were layered with eight different colors of plaster applied over the years,” Poe says. “My job was to make the new walls look like the old walls. I can’t even tell where our patches are. That’s what I like, when the old finishes are so perfectly matched that you can’t find my work.”
Some clients call Poe “the Illusionist” for her ability to exactly match the surrounding surfaces. “They say, can you make this look like the wood that’s next to it, and I say, yes!”
Stephanie says that most of her work these days is done in private houses around the Charleston area. “Everything is custom. I thrive on doing something different every day,” she says. “It’s rewarding but hard work, hand painting floors, troweling ceilings, painting furniture to match antiques. I’m currently transitioning into doing more original decor, designing and finishing original furniture, and making chandeliers and other light fixtures using beads hand-painted by my daughter Ashley.”
Traveling around Charleston, Poe sees her handiwork everywhere and has worked on some of the city’s most famous historic properties. “I did the shutters and door at the Aiken-Rhett House,” she admits. “And the wood grain on the door at the Nathaniel Russell House. I’ve got doors all over Charleston.”
Generally Stephanie continues to maintain homes she has worked on even as they change owners. “We’re on the third owner of one King Street house. We’re blessed to have homeowners who really care about history. Most want to preserve the historic qualities of a building as much as possible, so we don’t renovate… we restore.”
Stephanie says she recently took a carriage ride around Charleston and tried to blend in with the tourists. “They kept stopping in front of houses I had worked on. I had to hide behind my hat and hope none of the homeowners recognized me. It was a real trip down memory lane.”
Renee Wright
A graduate of Franconia College in Social Psychology, Renee has worked as Travel Editor for Charlotte Magazine and has written three travel guidebooks for Countryman Press among other writing assignments. She enjoys food and camping.
Make Sure To Stay At:
Mt. Pleasant / Charleston KOA, which is situated on the grounds of a real antebellum plantation. There's no mistaking you're in Carolina Lowcountry when you camp at this KOA. Big-rig friendly Pull-Thru RV Sites, Deluxe Cabins and Camping Cabins are lakeside.