A move to London sealed Cait Whitson’s fate as a skilled decorative artist.
Neil Braidwood speaks to her about her journey.
I met Cait Whitson in her Perth-based workshop where one half of her business, Whitson’s, operates from. The company develops and sells specialist products for the decorative arts industry, including paints, stencils and tools as well as importing lime plasters exclusively from Italy. Cait also has a decorating side to the business, called Carte Blanche, working mainly on stately homes and historic townhouses.
It’s been a long journey for founder Cait, who wanted to go to art school, but ended up doing a painting and decorating apprenticeship near Montrose, where she’s from.
“It was hard in the 1980s,” she tells me. “Being a woman in an industry that was dominated by men.
I had hoped that I could be a specialist wallpaper hanger at the end of my apprenticeship, but I doubted myself. My Journeyman was so good at hanging paper, I lost confidence in myself. I mean, he was hanging kilt fabric on walls and getting everything to match up! It was incredible. He had told me that I was pretty good at graining though, so I took heart and decided to try and specialise in that.”
Cait moved to London in 1985 to complete her learning experience at the recently founded Pardon School of Specialist Decoration, run by a grainer and marbler called Leonard Pardon. It was a three-month intensive course where students learned all aspects of decorative art, from wood graining to marbling.
She was rubbing shoulders with out-of-work artists and scenery painters who were trying out this new fad, but as an apprentice decorator, Cait found that she had an advantage over the other students due to the practical skills she had learned up north.
“During this time, there was a real interest in the writer Jocasta Innes,” Cait explains. “She had written a book about specialist finishes in the late 1960s and there was a growing trend in the interiors world to adopt some of her ideas. Then her new book came out, Paint Magic, and things just went crazy. Rag rolling, scumbling and marbling became must-have decorative finishes in the well-to-do parts of London.
“I was hooked on the special finishes,” Cait continues. “Although I came from this painter and decorator background, I couldn’t have spent my life rolling walls with magnolia paint in a new build. I had found my niche, if you like. My fate was sealed.”
Cait had always planned to return to Scotland after completing the course, but seeing an opportunity, she decided to start her own painting and decorating business, Carte Blanche, in London in 1986. Based in the east end, steadily the work began to come in.
“Smallbone Kitchens had just started and I got some work from them and it just grew from there. Posh houses, that sort of thing. I even did some work for the pop stars Freddie Mercury and Rod Stewart. This was the era of yuppies, Canary Wharf and loadsamoney,” she remembers.
“I moved back to Scotland after the property crash around 1991. I didn’t get paid for a big job I was doing – £11,000. Work had dried up as no one had any cash to spend anymore. So I came back to Scotland, feeling very hurt by that experience. I was quite down for a while and it was almost impossible to get a job in the decorating industry as a woman.”
Cait decided she would take a sales job at a chemicals company in Aberdeen in an attempt to boost her confidence and sell her skills. A year of cold calling people did just that and, in addition, she met her future husband Gibson at the firm.
James, their son, was born in 1995. Gibson became a house husband and Cait set up Carte Blanche again in Perthshire. Within two years Gibson joined her in the business starting as her apprentice and then becoming a partner in Carte Blanche and later, a Director in Whitson’s.
“We started the product side of the business, Whitson’s, in 2015 because the painting and decorating work was taking us all over the place, including Europe. There was one year where we only spent a few weeks at home. The rest of the time we were on site. It was just exhausting,” Cait says. We had always intended to just sell paint products through Whitson’s, but an opportunity came up in 2016 to buy a polished plaster supply chain. We knew the products and so we went ahead and did it. We’ve never looked back.
“We’re selling polished plaster products because they really are the domain of the painter and decorator and not the plasterer. In Italy, which is the home of polished plaster, that is certainly the case. It is the finishing trade that does this type of work. Painters just have a better feel for the product. They are more skilled.”
Cait’s son James also works in the business where he manages the warehouse and also deals with customers directly. Cait sent him on a polished plaster training course, so he has first-hand experience of working with the products. “I love that our products come from Italy and I’ve even been out to visit the factory near Venice to see how everything is made,” he says.
“We have a great relationship and we can really trust them. They do work on a slower timeframe than us though. The UK mentality is to order something and get it the very next day, but when it’s got to come all the way from Italy, sometimes you just have to be more patient.”
Cait continues: “It is a learning curve though. The product is entirely natural, made from lime, so it takes time to get to grips with it. I run a WhatsApp support group for Whitson’s which is open from 7am to 7pm.
It means that anyone who has bought our product can get in touch for advice during those times. I would rather offer that after-sales service and ensure the product was used correctly. I think we are probably
the only company to offer that level of service.
“We do training courses in the plaster products, and we are partnering with Platinum Plastering Services, Trades Training School, Deco-Plast and Italiwalls to help fulfil these. In addition, I will be ramping up teaching again in other aspects of decorative finishes. Wood graining and marbling are officially dying arts. I am an endangered species. I love to pass on my knowledge – especially to the younger generation in colleges, but I will definitely do private courses here at my studio.”
See caitwhitson.com