Stinson Studios

Stinson Studios Biography and Product Description

Stinson Studios has been a family operated business located in rural Ontario, Canada for almost 30 years. Don Stinson founded the studio under the name Don Stinson Woodworks after his graduation from York University & Sheridan College’s School of Craft & Design. Since then the business has grown to include all members of the family.
The Stinson’s spend the majority of their lives either in their rural studio or deeper in the Canadian wilderness. Woodworking functions as their medium to communicate elements of their relationship with nature. Each finished piece represents a unique balance between the human creativity and the individual character of the material. A successful balance breathes life into the final form. We strongly believe that we don’t create the beauty in our work, we reveal and accentuate what has already been inspired by nature.
The process begins with the selection of Eastern Canadian woods. Logs and burl knots are culled from sustainable wood lots, reclaimed from farmers’ woodpiles or harvested from the family farm. Our favored varieties include Sugar Maple, Red Maple, Silver Birch, Oak and Ash. To produce the turned salad bowls, tree trunks are roughed into blocks with a chainsaw and then turned on a heavy-duty lathe and caved by hand with a chisel.
The sculptural burl vessels are each buried in their raw form in wet shaving for 6 months to a year. This aging process enhances the richness of colors as well as produces black spaulting lines that thread themselves through the grain of the form. Of all the materials we work with we feel the greatest affinity to the raw irregular growths of burls. Each burl during its growth on the surface of a tree is subject to a combination of unpredictable forces creating a singularly unique raw shape. When sculpting the wood we react to the individual piece to reveal the form already inherent in the wood. Each sculptural burl is a taste of wilderness in an urban environment.
In a world where craftsmanship is being increasingly overshadowed by assembly line products, we strive to design and handcraft works of art function and art that will survive generations.