In New York, Chicago and San Francisco, the custom built decorative art pieces created by Baltimore’s own McClain Wiesand studio are featured for their beauty and careful craftsmanship. This tour offers a “twofer”: a tour of the McClain Wiesand workshop and an open house of the owner’s fabulously renovated apartments (Moroccan room and all) above his shop in historic Mount Vernon.

Tour Information

Date: Wednesday April 7, 2010
Time: 5:30 to 6:00 p.m. — Wine and Cheese
6:00 to 7:00 p.m. — Tour
Place: McClain Wiesand Custom Built Furniture
1013 Cathedral Street (Baltimore, MD 21201)
Cost: $15 (includes wine and cheese reception)

For nearly a quarter of a century, David Wiesand and his shop, McLain Wiesand, have fabricated furniture and decorative art pieces in the careful style of old world artisans. From Federal mirrors to Baltimore chairs, Guilford beds to Jay tables, McClain Wiesand can carve, sculpt, join, weld and paint almost anything in any material. Combining art and craftsmanship, McClain Wiesand carries on the great tradition of Baltimore’s famed furniture makers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, including William Camp, John and Hugh Finlay, and the Potthasts.

In addition to touring McClain Wiesand’s workshop and learning about custom fabrication, Mr. Wiesand has graciously offered to open his apartment space above the shop. Housed in an 1850 grand historic townhouse, the living space is like no other in Baltimore. The last residential occupant before Mr. Wiesand left the building in 1904 and the space did not get electricity or plumbing until Mr. Wiesand’s recent renovations. For most of the 1900s, the Reliable Tire Company owned the building and used the upper floors for storing snow tires (who says rowhouses aren’t versatile?!). Mr. Wiesand’s complete renovation of the space mixes centuries-old antiques with his own works, which are often hard to distinguish, and includes copper bathtubs, custom fabricated plaster tiles patterned from the Tremont Grand/Masonic Lodge downtown, and a “Moroccan room” full of ornate plasterwork from floor to ceiling (literally). Please join us and our host, David Wiesand, to learn about custom fabricating furniture and other decorative arts and to get an up-close view of this historic property and its total transformation into a gorgeous space where every square inch has had careful attention.

For additional information and questions, call Baltimore Heritage at 410-332-9992 or e-mail Johns Hopkins at hopkins at baltimoreheritage.org. Thank you to PNC Bank and Rohrer Studio, our tour series sponsors. This tour series is made possible in part by a generous contribution from the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts and the Maryland State Arts Council.