Jeffrey M. Poree, Sr, a fifth-generation plasterer and patriarch of the legendary Poree family of plasterers, is owner of Jeff Poree Plastering in New Orleans. The Poree family is legendary for their exceptional skills in ornamental exterior and interior plaster, artistic molds and specialty finishes, including old world Venetian and exotic finishes. Jeff Poree Plastering maintains a full time art department and can restore almost any mold by working from fragments, photographs or drawings. Mr. Poree is the plasterer of record for many of the region’s most important restorations of historic sites, including the historic New Orleans Collection Williams Research Center in the French Quarter and the Peristyle in City Park.
Darryl Reeves, a third generation metal worker, is owner of Andrew’s Welding and Blacksmith Shop in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward. Regarded as a natural, Reeves is well known for his creative contemporary steel and brass staircase railings and furniture, and is revered for his historic restorations of antique iron work at historic sites. His public commissions include the restoration of the ornate fence at the Presbytery in Jackson Square in the French Quarter, fabrication of a new identical fence (using old techniques) for its sister building, “The Cabildo,” and the disassembly and reconstruction of the massive gate at the Chalmette National Cemetery which dates to 1872.
