Hasta La Ideas

Given that his field is relatively rare, I thought Ben Lai would be secretive about the decorative painting techniques he employs. (Click here to see what those techniques can yield.) To the contrary, he has no problem with fellow tradesmen looking over his shoulder and even agreed to do some quick video demonstrations for Core77, which we’ll have coming up.

The video demos took a little cajoling, but that had more to do with Lai’s packed work schedule than fear that an onlooker could duplicate what he does. With nearly twenty years of experience in the field, he understands that his techniques are not something you can just pick up by seeing them a few times. “Half of it is the chemistry, the mixing of the paints,” he says. “Even if you can see or do exactly what my hands are doing with the brushes, if you don’t have the chemistry of the glazes down, you simply cannot produce the effects.”

Before we get to the video demos, we thought some of you would like to know what it’s like to work as a decorative painter and hear more about the peculiar blend of art and science that categorizes this field. Lai gave us the story, below.

Core77: Industrial design is such a broad field, it’s difficult to adequately explain what it is to someone at, say, a cocktail party. I’m guessing your field, decorative painting, has the same problem.

Ben Lai: For sure. It encompasses a lot of different things.

Let’s start small. What are some of the basic types of jobs you find yourself doing?

Some of the basic jobs that I do entail wood graining, painting something to look like a particular type of wood on various types of surfaces. Sometimes marbleizing. I basically produce painted textures to enhance a space.

Some of your clients are obviously super-rich. The first thing I thought was, why wouldn’t they just buy that type of wood, or buy that type of marble?

Lots of reasons. There are certain types of marble that are extinct, and there are certain types of woods that would actually cost more money to get [than it would to hire me]. On other jobs there are existing doors and moldings within the house, and you don’t want to tear it all down and put new ones in. Or it’s a situation where you have a house that already has real wood in there, they added space to the house, and they want the new wood to look like the existing antique wood. So I come in and match it to the real thing. And sometimes it’s a restoration project, where we are repairing something that has been damaged.

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