Chesa Studio/Practice
About
A development and restoration practice working in Connecticut, New York State, and Massachusetts.
Chesa Studio builds, restores, and repositions houses and country estates. The studio works in Connecticut, New York State, and Massachusetts, for private homeowners, family offices, and the developers and hoteliers who build to the same standard. Recent work runs from a Salisbury Federal with forty years of bad interventions removed to a new house outside New Canaan. Renovations begin at about one million dollars, and full houses run in the four to ten million range. Call (203) 651-8649 to speak with the studio.
Background
Our founder, Tom Engo, trained in traditional masonry, plasterwork, and restoration craft before founding the practice.
The studio opened in Connecticut after a Greenwich client asked for the same approach on a hillside above the Mianus River. That project and the three that followed in Litchfield County confirmed something simple: a serious country house wants serious masonry, real plaster, a hearth that anchors the room, and joinery cut to last three generations.
What we take on
We take a small number of commissions each year, restoration and new build in roughly equal measure. Our clients are developers building for the Greenwich and Westport market who want a real building behind the finishes, family offices holding more than one property under one standard of care, architects who want a partner on materials and fixed scope, and homeowners who want to know exactly whose hands will be on the work.
We turn down cosmetic refresh work, projects where the owner will not open walls, and new construction where the builder will not commit to hand-troweled lime and real masonry. Turning that work down is how we protect the commissions we have already accepted.
The team
Tom Engo, founder and project principal, runs every commission from brief through stewardship. Elena Caspari is project lead in Connecticut, covering the New Canaan, Greenwich, and Litchfield County sites and week-to-week client communication. Sofia Maranta is materials lead, responsible for stone, plaster, and joinery samples and for the spec sheets that go to the workshops. Markus Riatsch is site supervisor and walks every site each week the trades are active.
The team stays small on purpose. The same people carry a project from the first walk to the day the family moves in.
The workshops we build with
We use the same workshops from one project to the next. Craft does not go to whoever bids lowest, because the finish belongs to their hands.
In Europe: Officina Rivadossi outside Brescia for hand-forged unlacquered bronze and wrought iron, from hinges and latches to fireplace tools and stair brackets. Cave di Henraux in Querceta for Calacatta and Bardiglio. Sommerhuber in Steyr for kachelofen and bench stoves.
In Connecticut: Sean Halloran of Halloran Plaster in Torrington, trained in Dublin and Florence, for limewash and hand-troweled lime walls and ceilings. Caleb Witherspoon of Witherspoon & Sons in Sharon, fourth generation, for parquet de Versailles, kitchen cabinetry, and library paneling. Litchfield Stone in Goshen for fieldstone laid in lime mortar, and a smith in the Berkshires for the same iron and bronze vocabulary on American jobs.
These are the names that appear on every spec sheet we send.
Offices
The Connecticut office is in Litchfield, a working studio with a sample wall, a stone library, and a fabric room, with the materials kept where we can put them in a client’s hands. The office is on (203) 651-8649, Eastern hours. There is no answering service.
Working with us
It starts with a phone call of twenty to thirty minutes. If the project is a fit on both sides, we walk the building or the site together, at no charge. If we take the commission, we write a short letter of engagement naming the scope, the workshops, the project lead, and the calendar.
We send paragraphs and samples rather than decks. The first deliverable is usually a sample board on the client’s dining table: two limewash mixes, three stones, two oak finishes, one bronze pull, and a piece of Belgian linen. Clients who want to see the work first are welcome for a day in Litchfield County. The number for that is (203) 651-8649.
Restoration + Stewardship
Two to four years from intake to occupancy on a Federal or a chasa. We pull paint stratigraphy, sample lime, repoint chimneys, and rebuild a kachelofen with Sommerhuber. The studio carries the maintenance retainer for ten years after handover. Marmorino lime, Hull Forest Products on oak and chestnut, P.E. Guerin on hardware.
Open ++
New Construction
A house built new in Salisbury or Greenwich that reads as inherited. Three to five years from first call to furnished rooms. Allan Greenberg, Gil Schafer, Robert A.M. Stern as the canon we measure against. Hearth and arrival drawn first. Lime walls, fumed oak floors, encaustic cement tile in the mudroom, a Sommerhuber kachelofen against the family-room wall.
Open ++
Process
Seven phases. Site reading and brief. Historical and regional reading. Material language with samples on site. Workshop selection by name. Interior sequence drawn before furniture. Construction coordination with weekly site meetings. Stewardship plan attached to a ten-year retainer. Each phase produces a deliverable the client and the contractor can hold.
Open ++
Sources and notes
Workshops
Workshop names listed on this page are the same names that appear on the project spec sheets. Werkstatt Caprez, Halloran Plaster, Officina Rivadossi, Falegnameria Solivo, Witherspoon & Sons, Cave di Henraux, Litchfield Stone, Sommerhuber.
Contact
Phone (203) 651-8649 for the Litchfield office. Email contact@chesa.studio for written briefs. The phone is the faster route.
Speak with the studio.
Send a brief or call the studio. We respond to every serious inquiry within two working days.