Biography
Henry Norris (b. 1988) is a self-taught designer and artist from Canada’s West Coast who founded Henry Norris Workshop in 2020. He is also the founder of New Format Studio.
Interest to engage with the material world in all its forms—exploring, creating, experimenting, and foraging—drives him to be continually seeking out new methods of designing and producing innovative work. A chanterelle in the woods was created through the convergence of inputs from the environment—Norris thinks of his work in the same terms, that ideas are daylighted by exposing the mind to a variety of intermingling, seemingly contrasting stimuli.
Henry’s foundation is in industrial craft, which continues to inform his body of work—metalworking and finishing remain at the forefront of his creative mind, and the medium is the base reference for explorations in other vocabularies and combinations. Respect for and intimate knowledge of these timeless handcrafts, combined with the influence of disparate but parallel domains, positions his work with the innovative designers of today.
The spark for Henry Norris Workshop was a desire to explore work in which process can dictate form, absent of specific constraints around function.