(gentle music) - [Glenn] Charleston is unlike any other American city.

(bird squawking) Cradled between two rivers, Charleston is a witness to the founding of our nation, a monument to human ingenuity.

Three centuries ago, Charlestonians constructed the grandest homes of the era.

Today the city boasts perhaps the greatest concentration of surviving 18th and 19th century structures in the United States.

Intentional conservation is essential to preserving not only the architectural splendor of the city but the incredible skills of the craftspeople who built it.

(birds chirping) (singers singing in foreign language) Charlestonians' commitment to preservation has drawn the most skilled craftspeople from around the globe, from architects to artisans, carvers to carpenters, plasterers to painters, blacksmiths, masons, and others.

And it is their shared commitment to traditional techniques, (hammer tapping) collaboration, and sustainable practices that are inspiring future generations of craftspeople.

♪ Oh ♪ Oh (singers singing in foreign language) (singers singing in foreign language) - I'm Glenn Keyes, preservation architect here in Charleston, and I've been fortunate to work with this incredible collection of historic buildings since 1986.

Embedded within the fabric of each of these buildings is a story of many people, a story that begins with the craftspeople who built Charleston that is still being written by today's artisans.

- We don't really have a sense of civilization in the same kinda way without the craftsperson.

How did Charleston come into fruition?

Who did this?

People who actually got their hands dirty and actually, you know, put this thing together brick by brick by brick by brick, who did that, you know?

That's what we gotta talk about.

Doing this craft in this specific way, kinda the sense of responsibility.

Great way to kind of, like, think, well, geez, you know, this hammer's kinda heavy, you know, standing in front of this fire during the summer is kind of hot, you know, wearing these boots, wearing this shirt, you know, the same kinda shirt they were wearing, wow, wow, you know, this is really difficult labor.

You know, what kind of people were these?

- [Glenn] The people who built this country were African Americans, both free and enslaved.

They were British, French, and German immigrants and others of European descent working alongside native-born White Charlestonians.

And together they collectively made their mark centuries ago.

- You know, over the years, one of the reasons I've studied the tools, the early tools, is that they show me what actually created these houses.

People came in with their hands and their minds, they learned skills, and they created fabulous pieces of art.

And if you have a true appreciation for what it took for these craftsmen to do it by hand, with the benefit of very few mechanical tools, then I think it is a good foundation for how one's mindset should work going forward.

For many of these people, no matter what their color, this is the only mark that they have.

And once it's eliminated or obliterated, that disappears from sort of our historical narrative.

(gentle music) - At historic sites throughout the city, Charleston is recognizing and embracing its diverse past.

Without the contributions of immigrants and of enslaved people, the grandeur that we admire would not have been possible.

Nearly every object and building we see incorporates their additions to the city's architectural splendor.

Dr. Tiffany Momon professor and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archives is actively working to bring this narrative to the forefront by illuminating the contributions of the Black craftspeople whose ingenuity and skill helped build Charleston.

- When I go into an archive or when I visit a museum site or a historic site and I don't hear the story of Black craftspeople, that offends me, because as a historian, I know what happened at that site and I know who would've built those buildings.

I know whose labor, whose forced labor provided the funds to buy all of the things that we admire and think of as so beautiful.

There is not a colonial building or even post-colonial building in this city that they did not mold.

These are the stories we need to be telling.

The stories of the creators, the makers, the builders, the crafters who helped get us to where we are today.

The story of Black craft amongst enslaved and free individuals in the 18th century is a story that suffers from scant documentation.

Enslavers were not writing down every day what their enslaved craftspeople did.

And so the work that we are doing with the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive is to document the presence of Black craftspeople through an archive and a digital map.

This room that I'm sitting in today can be pressed into evidence and used as a source to tell the stories of the people who lived and labored in this building.

John Williams should be mentioned on every walking tour, every carriage tour of history in the city of Charleston.

His life was anything but ordinary, but it still functions as a great example of an enslaved craftsman who was enslaved, constructed one of Charleston's most impressive colonial homes, becomes a free man, takes on his own work contracts, and buys and emancipates three of his four children.

That's the power I want people to feel when they walk around Charleston.

People should know that story.

And for those contemporary craft students of today, this history matters because it's the history of your field.

It's the history of where you were and where you can also go.

And by being part of that field, you can take that knowledge, you can take that work, and you can then begin to transform landscapes, buildings, historic sites in the same way that those craftspeople did centuries ago.

- The study and the mastery of past techniques and practices is what separates Charleston's most distinguished craftspeople, many of whom contributed to the restoration here, the Charles Elliott House at 43 Legare Street.

(lighthearted music) - Best projects are one like the building we're sitting in right here.

This house at 43 Legare Street is a prime example where the clients are on board with kinda taking a academic approach to a restoration preservation job.

And the product is that we now have a building we're sitting in that has restored elements that have been missing for 150 years, in some cases.

We're doing the same thing that the craftspeople did back then.

In this case, this mantle piece was recreated based on the ghost marks of the paint evidence that we found.

And then working with a local carver, Mary May, who is really an incredible craftsperson, went around and surveyed all of the Rococo carving that we knew of that survived in Charleston to then recreate what we think is a very authentic Rococo Charleston element from the 1770s.

- In a historical town like Charleston, a lot of these designs that are in these homes, it's so important that they're customized.

You cannot really rely on the machines.

We got a little bit of information that we found the scroll and this design that went up the wall after a lot of work that they did to find that, I don't know how many layers.

It was an exciting project in just the keeping it as accurate and correct to that period time in Charleston.

Probably the minute I put (chuckles) the first cut into wood, I knew I wanted to do it forever.

30 years later, (laughs) I'm still doing it.

I learned from the master carvers in Europe, and I just wanted to be in an area that had a little bit more of that just classical experience, and I found it here.

- [Moby] We also brought in a local Mason, Robert Johnson, and in this one site, we did a fair amount of reconstruction of an early landscape.

- This one is special, I guess because of all those parabolas and stuff.

It had to be, you know, you had to get your numbers right.

(chuckles) I mean, I think it turned out well before they ruined it with all the plants.

(chuckles) Nah, I'm just kidding.

I remember working with a guy once, I was young, very young then, and at the end of the day, he said, "It seems as if every brick you lay, you want the next one to be better."

And that's kinda the way I felt about it.

I think now doing that, it's so much easier than when they did it.

How did they do these?

And some of the joints that they made were so tight.

I mean, just did a perfect job, you know?

And so you look at that, it locks you in.

That's what I think, it locks, it locked me in.

- When we got to the finishes in the very last part of the project, we needed a decorative painter, and Karl Beckwith Smith is a really fabulous local decorative painter that stepped up and came in and did a great job.

The paint finishes are also as it was when Charles Elliott built this house in the 1770s.

- We ended up with kind of a chalky, dusty look that when at night in candlelight you could see little particles in the surface reflecting, which would've been similar to what they would've seen in 1760.

Paint comes usually at the end of all of these processes, and it really is paint that draws all of that together, that puts the final touches on everything.

And it's painters who create that final veneer of visual impact.

It has an emotional quality or a experiential impact on what someone feels about a room when they walk in and look around.

I think it's paint that really ties everything together in the end.

(bright music) - It's so important to just keep the techniques and the ability to actually go into these homes and work on them individually with the clients and really keep that beautiful history of Charleston alive.

(gentle music) - In addition to the Charles Elliott House, Beckwith's work can be seen throughout the city, including within the historic French Huguenot Church, where he expertly restored the faux graining throughout.

Over the years, this obsession with original paint finishes shared by craftspeople, architects, designers, and preservationists alike has only been bolstered by the growing science of paint chip analysis.

(bright music) My first encounter with paint chip analysis was at the historic Charleston Foundation's Nathaniel Russell House in the 1990s, when we discovered the original 19th century finishes of the drawing room, covered beneath 22 layers of paint.

These original colors showed a level of English exuberance that had not been discovered in American homes of this era and opened our eyes to an entirely new facet and level of detail within restoration work.

Charleston's strong preservation ethic began in earnest in 1931, when the city created the nation's very first historic district.

However, it really wasn't until the latter part of the 20th century that Charleston drew the resources necessary to undertake restoration projects of the scale that we see across the city today.

The influx of resources came with Hurricane Hugo in 1989, a Category 4 storm that devastated the city and underscored the shortage of skilled craftspeople in the region.

It took nearly a decade to fully restore the city's damaged homes and historical buildings.

During this time, the seeds for the American College of the Building Arts were planted with a mission of educating the next generation of artisans who could fill this void.

- To have that come directly to Charleston, you can imagine the damage that was done to just the area in general, and then even looking deeper, you can imagine the damage that was done to some of the historical houses that you have Downtown.

Of course, you look at it and you don't want anybody just repairing.

You've got to understand that these houses are dated, these houses are historical, so you didn't want anybody just walking in and doing just work.

You wanted it restored and preserved.

So what we found was that people were bringing in craftsmen from overseas to actually do the repairs on these homes, because you could not find anybody skilled here to do them.

So that's how ACBA was birthed, through a need.

(hammers tapping) - Following Hurricane Hugo, Charleston hosted the 1991 Ryder Cup, and this war on the shore drew as much international tension to the game of golf as it did to Charleston's real estate.

Those looking for primary or vacation homes started coming from further across the country and even around the globe after seeing Charleston on display.

With this eventual injection of capital into Charleston's economy, the preservation scene flourished that both institutional and private clients now had the resources to properly restore these historic buildings.

In 2005, Clemson University and the College of Charleston jointly launched a Master in Historic Preservation program.

This created a path for students to pursue both academic and artisanal approaches to preservation, all against the backdrop of the nation's best preserved city.

Today, with so many artisans, apprentices, and students, tackling the city's restoration needs is a booming industry, with many eager to restore these buildings to their original form.

(gentle music) Undertaking these large-scale restoration projects is no small feat, and today's craftspeople must contend with modern issues like increasingly persistent flooding and the need for modern conveniences that often threaten original elements of a building.

These type of large-scale restorations rely as much upon traditional techniques as they do on the latest in preservation science.

The artisan must apply both to solve the existential threats these buildings face, all while preserving the historic fabric.

Such was the case in the restoration of both the John Ravenel House, the neighboring Roper House, and KKBE Synagogue.

Built in the Greek revival style in 1854, the John Ravenel House underwent a major restoration in 2017 when the owner employed Charleston's top master craftspeople to remove later intrusive alterations and restored the era-appropriate elements that had been altered through the years.

But because this commanding home sits on the harbor, flooding has been a recurrent issue.

Missing parts of the 19th century front garden wall had to be reconstructed, and new flood panels had to be fabricated to mitigate the impact of flooding ahead of a hurricane.

And to simply stabilize the house, an incredible amount of bricky repointing and structural repair had to be performed.

- It turned out a lot of the mortar joints had failed in the house, so before we could do anything, we had to strip all the walls and then re-tuckpoint halfway up into the second floor to get everything sturdy before we really could start.

That was a full probably year out of the five years that we worked on the house before we could ever cosmetically do anything, - [Glenn] Once structurally intact and secure, the craftspeople were then able to restore and reconstruct missing and damaged historic features.

- When we started on the project, we worked with the owners and tried to decide what were those original elements and what had been changed over time.

My crews redid all the plaster work inside.

We were able to recreate what we think were the early plaster medallions.

- It really doesn't matter what's going on, that's what your eyes drawn to, that cornice and that medallion in there.

Cornice in the house probably just took about two years by themselves just to redo 'em.

But it was worth it, it was worth it, so hopefully generations will be able to tell the kids, you know, your granddad worked on that house, and so, yeah.

- We worked with the graduate students in the Historic Preservation Department with Clemson and College of Charleston, and they were able to use the project as a study house for two and a half years, almost three years.

- I mean, all buildings have problems, and that's the great thing about it, is that we can fix them through all the technologies we have today and we can learn about them through taking back through a restoration.

- We do have one column at the Roper House on a back porch that's rotted and deteriorated to a point where it cannot be repaired.

And so we're gonna replace that with a column that we're gonna turn in our shop.

- Roper House definitely provides a great opportunity for students to learn, and with the column, you know, with it failing and then being able to make a new one and go through that whole process, it's incredible to understand what it takes to do that.

- [Moby] So what we end up doing a lot of times now is taking individual treated boards and gluing them together so there's full treatment throughout the entire solid column, and then turn that as a whole unit.

So that's what we're doing at the Roper House.

- Further inside the peninsula, the Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Synagogue, commonly referred to as KKBE, recently completed a significant restoration of its 180-year-old synagogue.

The most notable and visible work took place on the ceiling, where plaster and paint had been peeling away and falling from the high dome.

As we discovered, the issue stemmed from the installation of air conditioning.

To remedy this, we conditioned and dehumidified the attic, removed all the ceiling paint and moisture-damaged plaster.

We then restored the ornamental plaster work and painted the ceiling with a mineral paint that would allow any remaining moisture to move freely through the ceiling.

Though difficult in nature, the lessons learned in the restoration of historic buildings is what informs the stylistic treatment of new buildings.

(graceful music) Birdsong, which we had the opportunity to design, just outside of Charleston on Wadmalaw Island, evokes Charleston's classical history in this Greek-revival-inspired residence.

Throughout Charleston, craftspeople are actively working to bring their craft to the table of modern design, ushering in a new era of American artisanship.

An era whose focus is on creating sustainable systems as much as it is on creating works of art.

Looking to the future through the lens of sustainable business practices, they understand that the future of their craft depends as much on diversification and customization as it does on cultivating the next generation of artisans.

(gentle music) - I love this craft.

I love doing the work.

I also, you know, had every intention to start a family and own a home and do all those types of things that I knew practically I needed some level of security to do.

I thought early on that maybe I could create that environment, maybe that we could create something that was a company that did beautiful iron work that also had a business plan and paid their taxes and paid their employees, and people could count on going to work at this place and maybe making a career out of it.

We've done some real beautiful big commissions that we're super proud of, but it's not enough.

A custom gate that we might make is really only accessible by 1% of the 1%.

We're excited about taking aspects of those pieces that people like and making them accessible to a wider audience and getting more forged work out into the world.

- Really, when I say blacksmith, a lot of ears kinda perk up, you know, 'cause it's such a strange occupation in this day and age.

People love to see that connection, they love to see that people are still making things, because so much of our world now in 2021 is, you know, just, well, you order it on Amazon and it just kinda shows up at your door, you know, or you go to the store, and it's already made.

- The business behind craftsmanship is always a bit of an interesting thing, especially in the era in which we live, where everything moves very fast and everything tends to be disposable and everything seems to be accessible.

These types of small batch, made-to-order, handmade types of businesses can have a hard time surviving in that environment.

A lot of other creative businesses or artisanal businesses, they don't just naturally happen, they don't just naturally survive.

And so if you're only focused on the creative side of the business, you will probably lose the ability to do what you love.

(uplifting music) ♪ Oh ♪ Oh ♪ Oh - [Dave] Early on in the business, we realized that we were gonna need to create our own apprentice program.

We wanted to be able to demonstrate to our craftsmen that this is a career that you can really commit to.

- I've been here over 14 years, and I'm still learning.

I'm still improving on my craft.

- Obviously, there is technological advancements and equipment that is coming online that helps us do our job, but I think at the end of the day, it's very, very difficult to replace the hand aspect of what we do.

And so for us to continue to recruit, develop, retain those people who can do that stuff is perhaps the most critical piece of our future success.

- Charleston has long been recognized as a historic city, and some might think of it as a relic of a bygone age.

But art and buildings are not produced in a vacuum.

They're made by people, for people, and that human legacy is what lives on in the community of artisans working to preserve the past in the hopes that we will learn from them and use those lessons to design a better future.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)