Staff Enhancement Grant elevates member's furniture-making skills

Wednesday, May 6, 2020

In December 2019, the Staff Enhancement Grant Committee approved nine applications. Gill Lesperance was one of them. Here is his story.

I've always built things with my hands, I enjoy watching piles of stuff becoming a thing that creates a solution. in 2012 I was lucky enough to buy a house with a 600-square-foot shop space in the backyard, I spent the first year rebuilding that shop, then officially opened G&G Carpentry.

table
I was building custom furniture whenever I had the chance. Each project grew in complexity and scale until I found myself using thousands of dollars of exotic hardwoods and advanced techniques. One day I realized that I wanted more for my customers, and despite owning a large assortment of tooling, the largest asset I was missing was training in high-end fine furniture building.

A few months ago I was sitting on the couch reading an issue of "Canadian Woodworking" and I came across an article about an artist and his studio. It was a rapid-fire question-answer-style article; very short. But every answer this artist gave, made me think that this guy would be a great mentor.
As it turns out, this artist is located in Kitchener, so I decided to reach out and see if he would be willing to give me some private lessons to help me elevate my work.

table top
It turn out to be a great decision and a wonderful experience. Ryan designed these tables to incorporate as many challenging elements as he could fit into a project and then offered to have them build from a combination of hard maple and bird's eye maple.

We built these tables together, side by side, the process was an eye opening, mind expanding and enjoyable experience. 
A huge thank you to Ryan Davidson from 
https://www.davidsonandthomas.ca
https://www.instagram.com/davidsonandthomas/

If you have a minute and want to see some gorgeous work, check him out.

Photos here are of our Bistro Table project. 

Gill Lesperance