1 mins
STEPHEN QUINNEY
LUTHIER
LOCATION Toronto, Canada
ALL PHOTOS STEPHEN QUINNEY
I moved to Toronto in 2010, having worked in New York and San Francisco. I bought this workshop in what used to be an industrial heartland in eastern Toronto, but the area has been gentried in the past decade soit’s now worth much more! Renting in Toronto is di cult because space is expensive and the landlords are afraid your machines will be going all the time – Ikeep my bandsaw and heavy equipment in the basement anyway. The workshop is 55 sq m, and the basement
45sq m, so it’s perfect for storage as well.
I don’t have an apprentice but sometimes people phoneup and ask if they can work with me for a while. When they do, they often nd it a little hard to adjust because all the workbenches are higher than normal – I’m two metres tall, so I’ve adjusted them to suit myself. The bench halfway down the workshop is mounted on high wooden blocks for that reason, and the ergonomic HÅG chair is set quite high.
I do all my varnishing in the main workshop, and then hang my instruments up in the UV box at the back of the room. I’ve covered the inside in reThective material taken from a tent used for growing plants indoors, so the light will be reThected all around instead of being absorbed into the walls.
It’s lucky that the workshop is so big because it recently had to accommodate a lot of recording equipment for the TV show History in the Making, in which artisans demonstrate the traditional techniques they use in their work. They wanted to lm the entire process of making an instrument – in just one day! I had to start preparing months in advance so that when they came round I had six instruments on the go, so I could bend ribs, carve f-holes, do some varnishing and so on, all in one go. It was fun to do, and people have said they’ve seen it around the world.