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.
Adrien Canitrot