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Norm Sartorius

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Photography by Edward C. Robison III.
Norm Sartorius
Photography by Edward C. Robison III.

Norm Sartorius

born 1947
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BiographyNorm Sartorius left his job as a social worker in Baltimore in the 1970s to live in rural West Virginia. He apprenticed to a woodworker for six months and learned to carve letter openers, shoehorns, canes, and spoons. He made a living from selling craft items and quickly discovered the popularity of his unusual spoons. By 1989, Sartorius had devoted his work entirely to crafting unique spoons from exotic woods.

A creator of wooden spoons for 30 years, Norm Sartorius has explored the common wooden spoon as a context for sculpture. Using rare and unusual woods of exceptional beauty, he shapes each spoon to stand as a unique artistic statement of color, form, and texture. Testing the boundary between art and craft, his work is inspired by the material, nature, and rich ethnic spoon making traditions worldwide. In the end, it is always the dialogue between the maker and the wood that results in a form that happens to be a sculptural spoon. Often referred to as “Ceremonial Objects”, Sartorius’ spoons vary in size and shape, each being solely created by the artist.

[Retrieved from https://americanart.si.edu/artist/norm-sartorius-6615 & https://www.craftinamerica.org/artist/norm-sartorius/ on 7/25/24]
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