About
Stinson Studios and The Stinsons
Since 1982 Stinson Studios has expanded and emerged from the dim confines of a 150 year old horse stable to a custom built studio.
As an Outdoor Education Instructor and student of both York University and Sheridan College, Don began his woodworking with the intention of producing wooden salad bowls and later art pieces which balance utility with the beauty he saw inherent in nature. Since that time, the Stinsons have learned a great deal about themselves and their relationship with nature as evidenced by the changes in the work they have produced over the years.
As former Outdoor Educators, Don and Joanne have instilled in their children a love of nature and respect for the wilderness through family canoe trips and whitewater paddling. Jesse, Emma and Spike all work as Outdoor Education Instructors in the spring and summer teaching whitewater canoeing, kayaking, canoe tripping and sea kayaking. Their mother remains in the field of education as Principal of two local schools. Joanne’s example and love for teaching continues to inspire the rest of the family to share the things they love with others whether by teaching outdoor skills or through the things they create in the studio.
Environmental Sustainability Commitment
Stinson Studios is located in the heart of the Eastern Lake Ontario region. Our rural location inspires us to translate the language of nature’s beauty into the workings of human art. Five generations of Stinsons have resided in this area, instilling within us the importance of maintaining the health and beauty of our home. It seems natural that such deep roots would lead us to work with trees, giving that which grows from the Earth an artistic voice that fits easily into everyday life. We find in each piece of wood an expression of the ongoing symbiosis between people and their environment and work to illustrate this for our customers. As we seek to reveal the beauty and uniqueness inherent in the wood we craft, so do we attempt at every turn to maintain beauty in our natural environment.
We are committed to acting in the interests of a more sustainable planet through sustainable business practices. We do this through everyday business practices that sustain our work through reclaiming and recycling rather than wasteful consumption. Each step in the process of creating a bowl, a cutting board, or even a coaster, maintains the integrity of the wood we use and the environment the wood comes from.
The wood we use, the shapes we make
Our wooden products are created using Eastern Canadian woods, mostly maple, ash and yellow birch. The wood we use at Stinson Studios comes from either small sustainably harvested family-run woodlots or reclaimed waste. The irregular shape and unique character of some woods make them ineffective for industrial purposes. Our by-hand techniques are ideal for utilizing these beautiful but difficult to manage materials. A hollow log for instance, typically used only for firewood, can easily be used to make beautiful raw looking cutting boards. Burled wood is also purchased as a waste product from a local sustainably managed woodlot. Loggers conventionally discard these wild growths as waste product after an area has been logged.
To conserve our resources we maximize the use of each piece of wood by carving smaller bowls and burls out of the cores of larger ones – babushka doll style. Following the natural lines of the trees when crafting our bowls makes each piece as unique as each tree and as eternal as the natural environment we try always to sustain. Not only are the designs timeless, but the products themselves last virtually forever. If they do eventually become irreparable there is nothing toxic involved in their production, therefore disposal is benign. All elements of bowl creation in our workshop are non-toxic making the impact from their break down minimal. Because our bowls are necessarily food-safe, they are repaired with non-toxic epoxy and vegetable pigment if applicable. Cutting boards are produced as one solid piece of wood therefore there are no glue lines and no possibility of a non-organic product slipping into one’s food. Our wood is finished with canola oil and organic carnauba wax from The Bee Queen, a local producer of honey, beeswax and beeswax products. We strive for a cradle-to-cradle approach to production helping us to maintain an organic memory of our natural environment as we work in our sustainable shop.
In our sustainable shop
We keep our shop as environmentally responsible as we possibly can. Plastic and metal recycling has been in place for years, so nothing unnecessarily ends up in the landfill. Paper waste is used with our wood waste to fuel the water boiler that heats the shop through a radiant heat system running through the floor. Wood shavings and chips are donated to a government certified composting facility at a local abattoir or to friends and/or neighbors for gardening mulch or livestock bedding. We mulch our own trees, of course – not only do we like to work with trees, we like to keep them growing on our property. Packing materials are used over and over until they are no longer useful. Not only is this the norm for our own materials, but also for any we might accumulate as inbound shipments to the shop. In recognition of our own responsibility to reduce the environmental impact of our energy consumption we use only compact fluorescent bulbs in all our lighting fixtures. We also built our shop with passive solar heating in mind. The majority of its windows are south facing in order to maximize light and heat capture from the sun, reducing our electrical consumption as well as our dependence on the wood boiler system. The recent addition of an Environmental Officer to our staff ensures we will continue to keep abreast of ways to reduce our environmental impact while continuing to improve the sustainability of our operation.
Our sustainable future
At Stinson Studios we know that sustainability does not end with the decisions we make today but must be an ongoing process of change, improvement and adaptation. As our operation expands we are keeping in mind how to do so in the most environmentally friendly way possible. Any increase in business for us increases the amount of chips and shavings we are producing. We are recently capable of kiln drying our own lumber using heat from the burning of our wood waste materials. Having the capacity to dry our lumber on-site will reduce our carbon output by eliminating the need to transport lumber to and from a drying facility. We are currently looking into the production of wood pellets from our shavings and chips. Producing wood pellets for use as heat fuel would help to further the growing biomass industry since most pellets used locally are transported from British Columbia. As a further step our environmental minds are toying with the idea of using a diesel generator converted to use biodiesel (possibly used vegetable oil) to dry the pellets. This would essentially manufacture a biofuel with a process fueled by biofuel thus eliminating any negative environmental impact from our wood waste. Our vision of the future of our business corresponds with our vision of the future of the Earth – a beautiful, organically working enterprise for ourselves and for our children.
Visiting our studio
We are a working studio and as such are only open for visits at specified times and by appointment. Between May and September we will be open during the last weekend of each month on both Saturday and Sunday between 10am and 4pm.
Contacting us
Please feel free to contact us at:
Phone: 613-379-2177
Email: stinsons@stinsonstudios.ca
Fax: 613-379-9064
