About Oliver Pijoan

​

I actually don’t remember a time when I wasn’t working with wood in some way. Being raised on a small farm in rural northern New Mexico gave me extensive opportunities to explore, as well as develop a deep appreciation for nature. I was comfortable in an atmosphere of fixing things, working with machinery, and taking care of animals. When I was 9 years old my dad inherited a shop full of extraordinary tools. As a young boy I quickly learned how to use them, making small, simple items like toys and models of houses, from wood scraps I’d find. My love of working with wood continued to grow and in my late teens I was creating furniture, cabinets, clock cases and some musical instruments. I was also exposed to remarkable Hopi kachina wood carvers while our family operated the San Juan Mercantile, a large authentic southwest trading post that had been in the heart of San Juan Pueblo (now called Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo).

 

In my early 20’s I began working in the wood shop of Southwest Spanish Craftsmen in Santa Fe until I opened my own shop, continuing to make custom furniture, repairing musical instruments and other wood working projects. I was particularly drawn to the old ways of joinery - mortise and tenon, dovetails, splines, etc. and so I never used any metal to put things together. 

 

The art of Japanese joinery fascinated me and I learned to incorporate it into the pieces I designed, and eventually taught a Japanese joinery course at the College of Santa Fe. One of my students hired me to be a foreman on the building of a Japanese bath house outside of Santa Fe, called Ten Thousand Waves. I incorporated a lot of traditional joinery throughout. Eventually, I was being hired to build custom adobe homes in and around Santa Fe, and incorporating custom woodworking throughout each home. I was hired for a particularly interesting project by a doctor who had traveled in Japan. He wanted a traditional Japanese tearoom in his home, connected to the kitchen through a long hallway. The room included a raised platform of tatami mats, surrounded by a multitude of intricately paneled traditional sliding shoji screens, each screen having at least 200 wooden pieces and made without screws, nails or glue. 

 

By now I found that the physical labor of building homes was becoming too taxing, and I felt I needed to go a different direction. Since I had always been drawn to the healing arts and already had studied and taught massage, I returned to school to learn traditional Chinese medicine. My wife, Janna, and I opened and ran a Chinese medical clinic, first in New Mexico, and eventually in Fort Collins, Colorado. Throughout those 20 years as a TCM doctor, I continued smaller woodworking projects, until retiring in 2015.

 

I love the cheerful sound of the ukulele, so I began making them and they’re now my specialty. I build each ukulele one at a time; every part by hand. I encourage and guide my clients to handpick the exact pieces that will go into them. It usually takes anywhere from 80 to 200 hours to build a single ukulele, depending on the size and complexity of design. I have great respect for the trees that produced such magnificent wood and every part is made with care as well as including thoughts of the person who will make the ukulele sing.