Imagine any sign, lettering or logo, but in Plaster. Clay, lime, Tadelakt or traditional Venetian plaster.
Lettering and logos for the very high end retail space, hotel lobby, reception area or entrance will add an extra air of elegance and add something very unique to your marketing. We can make your desired signage in many different ways and with many finish combinations.
Dimensional lettering and logos spaced away from the wall ,. embossed just proud of the wall surface  debossed - just shy of the wall surface. all this you can have on any wall surface, including on a plastered one, or on one of our other specialties - old  brick finish.
For our costumers far away from Telluride and Durango, plaster logos and lettering can crafted in our studio and shipped to you, and if the project is of larger scale including other architectural finishing such as plastering the wall for the lettering, we are more than happy to mobilize our crew as we do work in other areas of colorado and the rest of the USA.

Plaster accent walls can have a great decorative effect in painted rooms, but here in our primary market for decorative finishes, Telluride and Durango Colorado, we typically plaster the room and the focus wall but with different finishes and textures. Color can also be an effective tool in this process depending on what you wish to convey, many times though the shadows created by the difference in grain size and texture can be enough.
Whether we utilize venetian, coarser Italian lime plasters or clay, traditional natural plaster is a very unique way of decorating your hotel lobby, reception area or high end retail space, and if well thought out and executed by the right craftsmen, your costumers will experience this as part of your brand.
Our backdrops can incorporate fire and water and are often combined with logos and lettering which can be of various types and styles, embossed, debossed, painted or even plastered, anything is possible, and our crew of talented artisan craftsmen have the experience to give you what you want.
Hansen Handcrafted Finishes can produce decorative effects like honed travertine, polished limestone, old world weathered plaster, suede or old elegant lime washed brick walls and much more. We are also very happy to follow your idea and customize a finish to your needs and vision.

These days when plastering, the substrate is typically drywall. There is an art to doing a good drywall job and making sure that it is ready to receive plaster, and in many cases the people performing this job are not connected to the people plastering, and thus not accountable to them. By offering this service, we have eliminated the finger pointing, and have taken the responsibility for our substrate in our own hands.

Workshops on Venetian lime plasters, American Clay and other natural finishing techniques.
We have over the past decade taught many workshops on using natural materials.

Please contact us for inquires about our national and international workshops taught by Lars Hansen founder and owner of Hansen Handcrafted Finishes, and other professionals from various countries. These workshops Vary from half day architectural introductions to week long intensive programs.

• Natural Finishes
• Finnish mass-stoves
• Clay pizza/bread ovens.

Venetian, other Marmorino plasters, American Clay or traditional lime plaster, the choices are many and they all have different properties in terms of humidity control, light reflection and how much pigment they are able to hold, can they be glazed, color washed, frescoed and waxed. Maybe you want stencil work or sculptural relief around a particular doorway in your house, or maybe you want to make sure that the plaster color is not too bold for your heirloom furniture, or that it is neutral enough for your contemporary home, or deep enough for your fireplace wall. Maybe you have a dream and need help visualizing it? We can help!

Through our showrooms in Telluride and Durango we strive to inspire you by showing the latest in architectural wall finishes and traditional old world plasters.
As a specialty plastering company we work very close with architects, designers, contractors and home owners, and typically in the design phase of the project. The more special and unique you want your finish to be, the more important this process is, as a lot of time and effort is put into making sure that you get exactly what you want.
We will meet with you in our showroom, look at plans and discuss ideas and and colors, or come to you to give a presentation of our decorative finishes.

Natural plasters and renders are concepts which have been around for thousands of years, and its synthetic counterpart only for a few decades. We know today the importance of a structures ability to breathe, and what benefits are associated with it, inside and outside. It is very clear that it is mainly due to the breathable capacities of the renders that decorate and protect ancient buildings around the world, ranging from farm houses to cathedrals, castles and temples, that many of them are still standing. This is our heritage, and with that our responsibility to continue the art and craft of traditional plasters, lime plaster as well as clay plaster. Hansen Handcrafted finishes has traveled far and wide incorporating our pride of the plaster trade and our heritage into plaster projects. Venetian plaster in Dallas, lime and clay renders in Europe, American Clay in Durango and Telluride, beautiful Italian intonachino lime plasters in Telluride and Denver, these are but a few of our projects and our decorative finishes are welcome wherever we go.

We apply a carefully selected range of natural plasters that works for you and your home, and makes it beautiful and something unique.

Natural Plasters are unrivaled in beauty when applied correctly, but there is more to it than looks. More and more studies are published on the beneficial properties of these plasters of the old world, and how to wisely incorporate them into modern day construction whatever the style.

Synthetic finishes have only been in use a fraction of the time that natural finishes have been used, but long enough that a new generation of architects and builders are more or less unaware of the benefits of natural plaster, natural paint and other natural finishes. To us the shift back towards the traditional ways is inevitable, and the momentum is is being supported by a growing number of people.
 As a part of the shift in the building industry towards awareness of how we as humans are affected by the materials used on and in our houses, Hansen Handcrafted Finishes is seeing it as our responsibility to educate around the non toxic alternatives to the more commonly used finishes in todays construction.

We offer classes, seminars, workshops and presentations for architects, designers, builders and everybody else with curiosity for something better, and encourage you to contact us with information about what you are interested in learning about and where you live. We teach and educate in and out of state and country.

Natural paints does not need faux techniques to look stunning, their composition, unique properties and how we apply them is enough to impress our costumers. We love these paints for the same reasons why people have loved them for hundreds and hundreds of years, and for their non toxic nature for us when we apply them, and for you when you enjoy them in your dwelling.

Decorative painting with natural paints, has taken us to job sites of different styles and natures, and is appreciated in new construction as well as in historical restoration work.

We also offer murals in various forms, and silhouette patterns and wall size graphic designs.

Lime plaster can with stunning effect be decorated with fresco techniques, this can be carried out as artwork or as a decorative effect giving a plaster wall more depth and life, making faux finish look silly in comparison.

Fresco painting - The icing on the cake. The person who knows the art of fresco techniques, has a very special tool that sets this individual apart from the rest of the crowd. The technique has been known for many thousand years, and has always  been recognized as one of the very finest art forms. There are three forms of Fresco techniques, "Buon fresco" where pigmented water is applied to a wet lime plaster, "a secco" where the craftsman works on dry plaster, and thus needs a binder to carry his/her pigments, and finally "mezzo-fresco" which is painted on nearly dry lime plaster.

The "secco" technique is clearly the easiest for painting portraits and landscapes and such since the artist is not depending on the lime being wet, and also all the plaster can be applied in one go, as opposed to in several sections as the masterpiece progresses across the wall.

Please contact us for more information about this rare specialty service.

In Denmark where I grew up, lime as well as clay plasters were used on interiors and exteriors, with location and architectural style being the main deciding factors for what type of finish was used where. As far as the look and feel goes, most most of the older structures stayed with the original finishes, and lot of new construction was influenced from trends in other countries, as architects and craftsmen traveled and worked in other countries and brought home new ideas.
Through my plastering company Hansen Handcrafted Finishes, I have brought traditional European plaster concepts and textural styles to many homes here in the United States, and as trends in the plaster industry come and go here, we draw on our extensive experience with the materials to set the new trends and restore the old. Also with our passion for preserving the old, we have developed a special technique to imitate old whitewashed brick, as to make new walls blend in with old.
Historical restoration is something we have an enormous amount of respect for, not only are we part of making sure that the generations to come can see how structures looked and were built, but we are also paying respect to the people who built and restored them before us, by being part of guiding the process towards using the appropriate materials so that the structure stays healthy and breathable, and of course beautiful.
Collectively our crew has performed restoration work on Libraries, museums, powerhouses, jails, castles, city halls, manors, post offices, adobe houses, farm houses, Victorians, manors and cathedrals in the United States and Europe.

Lars Hansen
Founder and president of Hansen Handcrafted Finishes

We have plastered countless fireplaces and mantels over the years, using a wide variety of plasters to fit our costumers different styles and tastes. Lime plaster, clay plaster, Tadelakt and polished venetian plaster all have their own place in the realm of the hearth, and with the many different textural possibilities for each of these architectural finishes, we can create your fireplace exactly how you want it.

Fireplaces of various types has been the most important element, and the main focal point of houses and dwellings for thousands of years, the place around which we have gathered, slept, read, told stories, warmed ourselves on the outside and on the inside, the place where we have let ourselves drift away all absorbed by the magic of the flames.

Fire continues to this day to mesmerize us, whether the flame comes from wood, gas, denatured alcohol or other fuels. Hansen Handcrafted Finishes have years of experience with various types and shapes of fireplaces, from building them from the ground and up, to plastering framed units, in styles from modern to traditional. Your fireplace can be plastered in finishes pitted, distressed, polished, sponged, dragged, striped, stone patterned, or made to look like it was made from old brick, or wrapped in suede, or something completely different from your vision.

We also arrange workshops on high efficiency mass stoves, taught by European stove masons.