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San Gregorio, Chile

Adrien Canitrot

Juárez Cabello, Juan Manuel
Stone carver

The son of stone

  • Adrien has known stone carving since he was a child
  • He uses direct carving as his main technique
  • He trained all over France before moving to Chile

Adrien Canitrot is the son of a stone carver, so he has been surrounded by tools and stones since he was a child. He spent his childhood watching his father practise this craft. At the age of 16, he entered the Compagnons du Devoir et du Tour de France, a French organisation that has been preserving craftsmanship since the Middle Ages. After two years of apprenticeship in Nîmes where he worked in the workshop of a quarry in Castillon du Gard, he began his Tour de France, and changed cities every year. "I lived and worked in Bordeaux, Orléans, Strasbourg, Barcelona, near Paris at the Fondation de Coubertin and the Ateliers St. Jacques, and finally in Rodez," says Adrien. "I had the opportunity during this trip to work for two years at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona and on several French historical monuments such as the Strasbourg cathedral, Rodez cathedral, and Maison des Marchands Lunéville among others." Since 2017, he has relocated his workshop to San Gregorio de Ñiquen in Chile, where he can see the Andes Mountains every day from his workplace.


Interview

©Alvaro Hernandez
©Alvaro Hernandez
How do the rocks of your region influence your work?
I carve the rocks that I collect on the banks of the rivers that come down from the Andes Mountains, which I can see from my workshop. The raw material is part of the identity of my territory since the riverbeds that surround me are made of stones.
What is the name of the technique you master?
I make my works with the technique called direct carving, which does not use stencils as references but hand drawings raised on the rock. This allows me to create unique works and adapt to the morphology of each stone.
What did you specialise in?
I specialise in making design objects, sculptures, and designed furniture with sections and thicknesses that are very rare in stone carving, such as bowls with some parts measuring no more than 1 mm thick.
Is there something largely unknown about your work?
I use the water resulting from the cutting and polishing of my stone carving to fertilise my sustainable farming crops. All my leftover scraps of stones are used to build roads, and the remains of wood are also revalued for reforestation.
Adrien Canitrot is an expert artisan: he began his career in 2000

Where


Adrien Canitrot

Address: Huenutil de Cabreria, 3850000, San Gregorio, Chile
Hours: Monday to Friday 08:00-18:00
Phone: +56 950160077
Languages: Spanish, French, English
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