Reflections on a Visit to Biltmore Estate

As a company and as individual craftspeople, we appreciate creative inspiration. Earlier this year we took the Hands of Sean Perry crew to Biltmore Estate for a tour, enjoying the lack of crowds, and digging into the building history and details. (The photo on the right is the view through the elevator steel.)

In the late 1800s Richard Sharp Smith (on the far right of this photo) was the supervising architect of the estate. Once it was completed in 1895, Smith and many of the estate craftsmen, stayed in Asheville. Smith went on to design several hundred homes and commercial buildings in Asheville. Seeing the stone work, the trim detail, and engineering in the home gives insight to the craftsmanship we see in historic homes and buildings we work on in town. Some of the estate door casing, for example, is quite similar to the door casing trim detail in Sean’s 1902 Richard Sharp Smith designed home. We think it is important for us to see firsthand the work that was inspired by and originally created by the same craftsmen.