Archive » Arts and Entertainment

Father daughter duo show wooden ornaments and art at the Alton Mill

December 20, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield 

The ornaments, pieces and beautifully turned bowls made by Lawrence Kristan and his daughter Lucy are regularly shown in the Alton Mill Arts Centre. The Caledon East residents have simply turned their professional lives into quite a productive hobby, as Lawrence calls it. He told the Citizen they moved there in 1978, when “it was just a village, about 1,200 people.”

He has been making wood bases since his teens for trophies as an employee, for about 25 years. He started on his own, making and refurbishing bases for trophies and plaques.

“What happened,” he began his story, “I knew for a couple of years that I had enough with a business. It was just that time. In my mind, I always wanted to retire before 65.”

Still, Lawrence needed something to keep him busy and wood was his best skill set.

He added to his few pieces of equipment and one of the new items was a lathe, which he had never used but thought he would enjoy.

He started turning and giving his bowls away to his neighbours until, finally his daughter joked, “The neighbours are going to go the other way if you are coming with a bowl.”

When Lawrence started making Christmas ornaments, they were great gifts to neighbours but a local coffee shop called Marvellous Munchies took the ornaments to sell, and they did very well.

Eventually, a gallery wanted some ornaments, as did others, including the Alton Mill and again, he informed us, “I said enough. I was only doing it in the winter because I like gardening in the summer.”

His daughter Lucy has worked in their business in Weston and stayed until they sold it when she too started making little things and helping him. Now, Lucy is the one who supplies the Mill and Dragonfly Arts in Orangeville and sets such shows as they attend.

Only local wood and materials are used in the many lovely wooden creations Lawerence and Lucy produce.

“Everything that we use,” Lawrence assured us, “is something that somebody else is getting rid of.”

A customer welcomed them to take the fallen trees and limbs out of his woodlot. The surprise has been how amazingly big some of the fallen trees are, as much as two feet thick giving nicer wood. While rot and mould are a threat, it is a matter of getting to the wood before it deteriorates. 

“I love doing it,” was his enthusiasm. “This is a hobby. A lot of equipment, I had to replace and some needed to be a little bit more professional. My time is not considered in the price; the time is free; the power, the material and all of that is paid for by the sales.”

Lucy studied Business Administration and Accounting at college but decided she just loved working with her hands. She went to join their wood business for the summer and then just “kind-of never left.”

She told us, “I was offered an accounting job with an international business and I thought – no. I like this.”

It is the hands-on finishing she did while working in her father’s business, re-finishing and the restoration of very prestigious “stuff.”

While only referred to as “the shop,” it was 10,000 square feet in Weston and very industry-specific but with some exciting customers.

“My dad got a phone call,” Lucy began, “of a job coming. They will be a whole bunch of trophies, they said and they were all coming from the Hockey Hall of Fame. All of our employees were told not to tell anybody because we had no security; anyone could have broken in. But no one said a single word about them to other people.” 

The initial job of caring for and restoring the trophies led to a regular flow from Hockey, Henley [Royal] Regatta and the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.

Yet, for them, “It really was, once we got them and the jobs were done, it was just another day at the office.”

When Lawrence sold the business, he needed something else; he knew wood turning enough to start: Lawrence’s early life in the border region between Austria and Italy was surrounded by the forest from which Stradivarius got his wood for his violins.

While Lucy still liked working with wood, she was a management staff person at a volunteer organization to help non-profit organizations find their way and she was an employee until just before Covid.

Retired, she went back to the workshop, taking on more of the turning and the shows because shops were calling for the goods. Lawrence is not interested in the business end. They do some shows, at the Mill, in Alliston and the Bovaird House in Brampton.

Their Christmas decorations are in a couple of styles, such as birdhouses and unexpectedly, Hummingbird shelters, the tiny birds will use at night. The owner of King Gallery in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where their houses are sold, discovered a hummingbird using one of the houses as a nighttime shelter.

Lawrence and Lucy call their not-a-business Inspirations.

Lucy defined it, saying, “Everything is done by hand. We’re not trying to run a business. We are enjoying a time in the shop.”

Look for their collection at the Alton Mill Arts Centre over the holiday season.

Readers Comments (0)