Adrian Ferrazzutti

Adrian Ferrazzutti has been immersed in art, woodworking, and fine furniture all his life. Growing up an only child in Ontario, he watched his German-born grandfather carve logs and antlers into whimsical animal sculptures. Both Ferrazzutti’s mother and his grandparents were antique dealers who liked to live with many of their finds before selling them, so he was always surrounded by extraordinary furniture and artifacts. Ferrazzutti was also affected by his mother’s first career as a fine-art photographer. Through observing her as she composed and developed her photographs he gained a sense of composition-what to put in and what to leave out-that provides the foundation for his furniture designs.

The furniture Ferrazzutti produces these days in the shop he shares with five other craftsmen in Guelph, Ontario, reveals an excellent eye for form and line coupled with engineering savvy. What’s not so obvious in his complex yet fluid-looking work is the amount of effort required to arrive at a design he finds acceptable. It’s not uncommon for Ferrazzutti to make two, three, four full-size mockups before he feels the piece is ready to build. A good project for him, he says, involves “very complicated work that looks simple when it’s done.”