WINTER BENCH
Designer/Manufacturer
Ethan StebbinsCirca
2023
Description
Inspired by the Japanese craftsmanship traditions and ethos, the Winter Bench was created and hand-crafted by American stone carver Ethan Stebbins. The Maine-based artisan uses the Japanese time-honored techniques of interlocking joinery with local materials he carefully selects in the natural environments neighboring his studio.
Ethan Stebbins
Ethan Stebbins
Maine-based master stone carver and woodcrafter Ethan Stebbins explores the possibilities of both media through sculpture's time-honored techniques of subtraction and minimalist Japanese joinery details. His organic sculptures emphasize the material's inherent beauty with seamless precision and simplicity, embodying the artist's painstaking work and his reverence for the natural materials.
His practice is deeply informed by the ethos of traditional Japanese craftsmanship and that of Japanese-American furniture maker George Nakashima — "The purpose is usefulness with a lyric quality."
Stebbins discovered his vocation while training as a stonemason in 1997. He then pursued apprenticeships under master gardener Masahiko Seko and American master craftsman Chris Tanguay, honing his stonework.
Drawing on the natural landscape surrounding his studio in coastal Maine, Stebbins carefully selects tumbled stones from the rocky shore to hand-cut and chisel, emphasizing their natural surfaces. His approach draws from a Japanese sensibility of appreciation and humility, as well as the wabi-sabi philosophy, with instinctual techniques that embrace the natural edge and textures of the material; the simple forms of his designs place the unworked, raw material at the center.
"My work mainly relies on paying close attention to the organic matter's properties. One must appreciate the individual characteristics of a certain wood kind or a certain type of stone before shaping them and joining the two together. […] There is a rather special moment when you carve, a quiet, flashing moment when the natural character of the stone reveals itself. This moment is everything." — Ethan Stebbins
Alongside his stonework and furniture design, Stebbins is a poet whose work has been widely published.
Ethan Stebbins
Maine-based master stone carver and woodcrafter Ethan Stebbins explores the possibilities of both media through sculpture's time-honored techniques of subtraction and minimalist Japanese joinery details. His organic sculptures emphasize the material's inherent beauty with seamless precision and simplicity, embodying the artist's painstaking work and his reverence for the natural materials.
His practice is deeply informed by the ethos of traditional Japanese craftsmanship and that of Japanese-American furniture maker George Nakashima — "The purpose is usefulness with a lyric quality."
Stebbins discovered his vocation while training as a stonemason in 1997. He then pursued apprenticeships under master gardener Masahiko Seko and American master craftsman Chris Tanguay, honing his stonework.
Drawing on the natural landscape surrounding his studio in coastal Maine, Stebbins carefully selects tumbled stones from the rocky shore to hand-cut and chisel, emphasizing their natural surfaces. His approach draws from a Japanese sensibility of appreciation and humility, as well as the wabi-sabi philosophy, with instinctual techniques that embrace the natural edge and textures of the material; the simple forms of his designs place the unworked, raw material at the center.
"My work mainly relies on paying close attention to the organic matter's properties. One must appreciate the individual characteristics of a certain wood kind or a certain type of stone before shaping them and joining the two together. […] There is a rather special moment when you carve, a quiet, flashing moment when the natural character of the stone reveals itself. This moment is everything." — Ethan Stebbins
Alongside his stonework and furniture design, Stebbins is a poet whose work has been widely published.
