‘I love that it takes so long to make canoes,’ declares Trent Preszler. The artisan boat maker took up his craft after his father died, using the tools he inherited to create a canoe over the course of fourteen months, matching elegance with exquisite detail. The hundreds of layers of wood include cedar, black walnut, zebrawood, purpleheart and Mexican ziricote, sourced from an exotic wood dealer close to his Long Island studio.
In that first canoe, and those he has made subsequently, the aesthetically stunning design is then coated with fibreglass and epoxy, and varnished. The seats – outsourced to Jason Thigpen, of Texas Heritage Woodworks – are made of hemp and leather, while the cutwaters are cast in solid bronze by Kristian Iglesias of Kai Design.
Preszler loves testing his 150-pound creations on the water, declaring them to be ‘light and agile’. Some clients are so beguiled by the canoes’ beauty they have even been known to keep them as works of art.
