Island Wolf is a small-scale tannery and jewelry maker based on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. I focus on utilizing local animal parts that would otherwise go to waste from food hunting, illegal carcass dumping, and scavenged natural deaths.
I grew up in a small town on Vancouver Island in a family of subsistence hunters around plenty of taxidermy. I never realized until moving away how much I admired the craftsmanship that goes into each piece. In 2015 a friend announced he was getting married, I went about painstakingly learning the tanning craft from scratch and tanned a bear skin rug for a wedding gift in my tiny shop without any of the correct tools or equipment. The rug turned out pretty well and I’ve been tanning hides ever since.
Additionally I clean and reconstruct skulls from my own personal kills as well as others I find during my time in the bush. Everything from wolf chewed deer skulls to pig skulls dumped in the bush.
In the interest of using every part of the animal, I also utilize the bones and antlers of my personal kills as well as those I found in the forest for jewelry and other small wares. I specialize in antler rings and handmade bone runes for divination. However I’ve been known to craft the occasional necklace or set of earrings as well.
