Woodturning is the craft of using a wood lathe with hand-held tools to cut a shape that is symmetrical around the axis of rotation. Like the potter's wheel, the wood lathe is a mechanism that can generate a variety of forms. The operator is known as a turner, and the skills needed to use the tools were traditionally known as turnery. In pre-industrial England, these skills were sufficiently difficult to be known as "the mysteries of the turners' guild." The skills to use the tools by hand, without a fixed point of contact with the wood, distinguish woodturning and the wood lathe from the machinist's lathe, or metal-working lathe.
Bob Stocksdale was an American woodturner, known for his bowls formed from rare and exotic woods. He was raised on his family farm and enjoyed working with tools. His wife of more than 30 years, Kay Sekimachi, stated that, "His grandfather gave him a pocketknife, and he started to whittle. That's how it started."
Ron Kent, also known as Ronald E. Kent, was an American woodturner who was born in Chicago, Illinois. He ran his own investment company in Hawaii. In 1975, his wife Myra gave him an inexpensive lathe for Christmas. Not wanting to seem unappreciative, he walked down to the beach and found a piece of driftwood. Fitting it on the lathe, he turned a form from it with a sharpened screwdriver. In 1997, Kent took an early retirement from his financial profession to concentrate exclusively on woodturning. Ron Kent lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.
The American Association of Woodturners (AAW) is the principal organization in the United States supporting the art and craft of woodturning. It is sometimes stylized as American Association of Wood Turners (AAW). Established in 1986 and headquartered in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the organization encompasses more than 15,000 members in the United States and many foreign nations. As of 2013, the AAW was affiliated with nearly 350 local chapters worldwide. In addition to sponsoring an annual national symposium, the AAW provides support to local clubs for outreach and education. The 25th anniversary of the AAW was celebrated in 2011 at the annual symposium held in Saint Paul. Phil McDonald is executive director of the organization.
Mark Lindquist is an American sculptor in wood, artist, author, and photographer. Lindquist is a major figure in the redirection and resurgence of woodturning in the United States beginning in the early 1970s. His communication of his ideas through teaching, writing, and exhibiting, has resulted in many of his pioneering aesthetics and techniques becoming common practice. In the exhibition catalog for a 1995 retrospective of Lindquist's works at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, his contributions to woodturning and wood sculpture are described as "so profound and far-reaching that they have reconstituted the field". He has often been credited with being the first turner to synthesize the disparate and diverse influences of the craft field with that of the fine arts world.
Mel Lindquist was an American engineer and woodturner. He was a renowned pioneer of the American studio woodturning movement.
Noeline Brokenshire was a New Zealand sportswoman, who represented her country in field hockey, and as a hurdler at the 1950 British Empire Games. Later she was a gallery owner and noted woodturner, and the founder and publisher of New Zealand's first woodworking magazine, Touch Wood.
Binh Pho was a Vietnamese-American artist best known for his pierced and painted works in wood.
The American Studio Woodturning Movement can be traced back through diverse international movements and schools of thought, including Arts and Crafts, Mingei, Bauhaus and Scandinavian Design. The field was born when a number of individuals, working in different parts of the United States, began to explore design and aesthetics utilizing the ancient process of woodturning.
Norm Sartorius is an American woodworker who carves fine art spoons in many styles including natural, biomorphic, abstract, symbolic, ethnic, and ceremonial. His works are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other public and private collections. He is a frequent participant in woodworking and craft shows in America, and won the Award of Excellence in Wood at the 2015 American Craft Council show in Baltimore and the 2015 Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, DC. Since 2008, he has co-directed a grant-funded research project on the life, work, and legacy of American woodworker Emil Milan.
Michelle Holzapfel is an American woodturner and a participant in the American Craft movement. She has five decades of experience turning and carving native hardwoods in Marlboro, Vermont, where she has lived her adult life. Holzapfel fits the definitions of both Studio artist and Material movement artist. A product of the revolutionary back-to-the-earth movement of 1960s and 1970s, she attributes the expressiveness of her turned and carved forms to the idealism of those years. Raised in rural Rhode Island, she has worked alone in her Vermont studio—shared only with her husband, the furniture maker and educator David Holzapfel—since 1976. Her wood pieces which feature intricate carvings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the U.S., Australia and Europe. Publications featuring her work include but are not limited to House Beautiful, American Craft, Woodworking, and Fine Woodworking.
Wendy Maruyama is an American visual artist, furniture maker, and educator from California. She was born in La Junta, Colorado.
Merryll Saylan is an American woodturner. She is credited with helping pioneer the popularization of the woodturning field and the application of color in wood art. She is noted as being one of the few women in the craft field, when she first began turning during the 1970s.
Ron Fleming also known as Ronald Franklin Fleming was an American woodturning artist whose pieces featured foliage motifs. His works are in the permanent collections of American museums such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery and the White House Permanent Collection of American Craft.
Katie Hudnall is an American artist known for her woodworking. Hudnall teaches at the University of Wisconsin–Madison having previously taught at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis.
Barry Charles Biesanz, also known as Barry Biesanz Hiltunen is a woodturner who became a Costa Rican citizen in 1998.
Bert Marsh was a British woodturner, known for his beautiful forms and technical mastery. He was raised in Hove, England. "Bert was known throughout the woodturning world as a talented turner, inveterate story-teller, and mentorfor many of today’s top turners." He has been called "the king of British woodturning."
John Jordan was an American woodturner, known for his textured and carved hollow vessels and small necked bottles, his teaching and demonstrations around the world, and his tool designs.
Rude Osolnik (1915–2001), was an American woodturner, author, and educator. He is considered an important figure within the American studio woodturning movement and in contemporary woodturning in the United States. He was the department head in the woodcraft industry program at Berea College for forty years. Osolnik was elected as an American Craft Council (ACC) honorary fellow in 1994.
