Decorative Painter
It’s lucky that E. Lee Jahncke’s parents routinely “hauled” her to adult parties as a child, as those outings became opportunities to indulge her curiosity about beautiful interiors. “There was always something that would interest me, like a painted wall or painted piece of furniture,” she recalled. “Everyone who lives in New Orleans, by and large, just has an appreciation for interesting decorative items and art.”
Jahncke may have had an extra-aesthetic predisposition. Her uncle is architect Davis Jahncke, and her grandmother was also a talented artist. Jahncke studied art in college and knew from the start that she “needed to be tangibly touching and painting things.” She launched her career in the Washington, DC area, pursuing work that introduced her to the fundamentals of painting in homes. She deepened her decorative painting expertise by attending the North American Chapter of The City and Guilds of London Institute in conjunction with the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC. That program taught her the detailed skills of the trade — everything from basic painting to highly decorative wood grains and gilding.
Jahncke moved home to New Orleans and dived into the local scene with projects like a set of metal doors at the Historic New Orleans Collection that she painted in highly decorative crotch mahogany. She applied her talents to homes, like one in the Garden District that allowed her to play off elements of a chinoiserie wallpaper in a hand-painted mural extending beyond the paper’s borders and a complementary bamboo pattern below. “It’s funny because a lot of people don’t realize that it’s hand painted,” said Jahncke. “Because it’s very thin little lines and very subtle — but special.”
Over the years, Jahncke discovered that she works best with constraints, the kinds presented by a restricted color palette or tiny space, or the many quirks present in old New Orleans homes. “It doesn’t matter if the house is big or small, old or new, [it’s] the nature of the way things are here,” she noted. “Every house has some little funky something or other that needs to be disguised or thought about in a different way.” That might mean painting a fabric shower curtain to appear as an extension of wallpaper, or helping travel-loving homeowners transform a small stone porch into a subtly Turkish-inspired haven that feels like it’s been there “for a long, long time.”
Jahncke also paints furniture, lighting and fabrics — for her own bespoke products and for local designers and makers. “The busier I get, the more ideas I get for different things,” she observed.
She finds constant inspiration in her hometown and its residents who prefer to stand out from the crowd: “Here, everybody loves to be different as opposed to exactly the same. As a result of living here, I don’t ever do a project twice — everything is unique to a family and their home, and every day is a different day for me… I probably wouldn’t be able to live if my life wasn’t like that.”
