Designer Riley McFerrin launched Hinterland on the Sunshine Coast back in 2011, creating furniture, lighting and home objects with a focus on local, sustainable materials, transformed into enduring, beautiful objects of art. In 2023, he was awarded with the Sam Carter Award of Applied Art and Design, one of the highest honours for artists and designers in B.C. We’ve been proud to feature Hinterland’s work since our beginning: we caught up with McFerrin in his studio in Mount Pleasant. 

Let’s talk about your origin story: how did you make your way from L.A., where you born, to Vancouver?

I was born in LA and then I went to the University of Oregon, which I mark as the real turning point for me. I went to take fine art at U of O, and that was when I realized I really want to be in the Pacific Northwest. I really want to live in the forest. 

So I graduated and then moved to San Francisco for 10 years. During that time, I was making fine art and doing gallery shows, making sculptural things and paintings and built environments, but simultaneously got a job learning to be a carpenter out of university. I had no building experience or really any kind of hands-on experience—I don’t have any of that in my upbringing. I never took shop class. My dad was not handy. Probably I learned more from my mom doing crafts and being in the garden with her. 

So I was building homes six months out of the year and making art six months out of the year, trying to get art shows out in the world. I had a gallery in LA and a gallery in San Francisco and was really working to get to New York. And then at that point life takes over. I meet my wife in San Francisco, and she’s from North Vancouver. We start having kids—and so we left San Francisco and moved to the Sunshine Coast. The Sunshine Coast was where I started Hinterland—and the idea was that I was going to take all of this art background that I had been fostering over all of these years, and all these ideas about woodworking and the forest and sustainability and the back-to-the-land movement and hippies. And then merge that with what I had been doing in San Francisco for all those years, which was modern architecture: working for the best architects in San Francisco, building beautiful homes with a general contractor, becoming as good a carpenter and woodworker as I could become. And Gibsons really called to us.

And do you remember—and maybe it’s still with you too—what it was about the Pacific Northwest that spoke to you in Oregon? What was it that said, I’m home, this is where I’m meant to be?

Oh yeah, I totally know. I still know to this day. I just had it in Whistler last weekend. My wife and I went to the Scandinave Spa, and we came out of the spa around two in the afternoon, and said, let’s go for a walk. And we just started mushroom foraging and exploring the forest right behind Scandinave. And I was like, how easy is this, and how amazing is this, that we can be in this place and we can turn around and be in this other place? For me, it’s that. It’s that love of exploring and discovering new things in the wilderness, every opportunity you can get. 

 It’s that sense of excitement and uncovering things, especially in the forest. I’m a real forest person—I had it when I was a child camping, and I still have it, which is: let’s just go see what’s around the next corner. Let’s just go explore. My family always gives me a hard time because when we go on short hikes, I never want to turn around and head back to the car. It really is being inspired by the woods and the forest and the trees and the moss and the mushrooms and all of those things. It’s like a treasure hunt every day. And I freaking love it. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

Tell us how that shows up in your work—that love of the forest seems so intertwined with the work that you create.

It’s always been hard for me to pinpoint that connection and that inspiration, because I do find inspiration in the art world, and in the architecture world, and in design movements, and in the history of design and fine art.

And I’m always looking at antiques and old things. But at the end of the day, I think for me, it’s the connection with that physical touch of material, where I always want everything that I make to feel healthy to be around. It’s healthy to touch it. It’s healthy to have it in your house. And that usually comes from quality, healthy, good materials. And for me, it tends to be wood. I know trees, I know forests, I know that ecosystem very well. I’ve studied forests my whole life. I went to the University of Oregon wanting to be a forestry major. It was like, I’m either going to be an artist, I’m going to get involved with forestry, or I’m going to be a landscape architect, because that merges those two things. And once I started going down that path, I decided, I want to make art about the wilderness. I want to make art about the forest. And that was how I started connecting those dots and really studying all of the old woodworkers and craftspeople that can take a tree and turn it into a piece of furniture or a finished piece of art or object. And it’s magical for me.  

If I can have a tree in the woods, if I can pick up a branch, and if I can with my bare hands turn it into another thing, zero impact on the environment, I’m not burning fossil fuels, I’m making things by hand. It feels very healthy. And I try to think about a lot of the stuff that I make in that way. What is the connection between the material and the maker? And then how does that connection between material and maker and the end user close the loop? 

Speaking of wood, let’s about the Little Gem—it’s been part of your collection since day one, right?

Yeah, totally. It was one of the first pieces I made.

So tell us more about its origin, and why it’s stayed part of your collection for this long. 

It’s definitely, over time, our best seller. So when I moved to the Sunshine Coast and was starting to build a brand, I thought, I want to name my studio something that feels like where it comes from. And so that’s where I got the name Hinterland, because I was thinking very locally. I wanted to make all my products from things that I can find on the Sunshine Coast. And it literally started with me driving up logging roads to clear cuts and finding chunks of wood. As somebody from San Francisco, I couldn’t believe this wood was just sitting out here. There are piles and piles of wood in these clear cuts that are just left behind, that are basically the slash from the logging practices. And on the coast, you can get a permit for collecting firewood at clear cuts. 

So I literally was driving into clear cuts with my chainsaw and just chopping out blocks of wood and bringing them back to my shop and thinking, what do I do with these busted-up stumps of wood? It’s almost like there are these little treasures in the forest that need to be given a life. And literally I thought, they should be carved into crystals, because it’s like turning something into a gem. It’s a diamond-in-the-rough situation. Honestly, it feels like a million years ago, and back then people were not making faceted, crystalline-shaped furniture. 

And then I thought, if I do them like this, they could actually be a useful object, which is a side table. And if you put a couple of them together, you can make multiple heights. 

I think I first made eight Little Gems and put them in my truck and went back to San Francisco. There was a store in there called Propeller that was the first showroom that started carrying my stuff, because I had a personal relationship with the owner. And for me, it felt like a real full-circle moment:, I’ve moved to B.C., and I’m doing what I want to do with this material that I have so much admiration for. I’m converting what is basically garbage wood back into these beautiful shapes, and now I’m bringing them back to San Francisco to launch my furniture brand.

You’ve been with Provide since our early days in Crosstown. Why is it that you’ve chosen to continue to work with Provide over the years?

First of all, I love David’s aesthetic. I think that he has a very good eye and I feel like we speak the same language. He really does focus on natural materials, which I love. 

But I think the thing that makes me the proudest and most happy is that he works with so many local people, which is another thing that is hard to say about a lot of other places in town, unfortunately. And it’s tough, because you want to think that the Vancouver community is strong, tight, close-knit. But the reality is there are a lot of people who struggle in town because they don’t have a place in town that represents them and actually pushes them and talks about them and sells them. David has a lot of local furniture. He’s got Ben Barber’s work. He’s got Lock and Mortice’s work. He’s got a lot of ceramicists that are local. He’s got Origins. He’s practicing what he preaches. 

That is something you cannot shout loud enough from the rooftops: they are a local store representing local makers and really bringing the entire community up together to strengthen that. It’s hard to be able to promote local design but also run a business, because you’re like, I’m just trying to make the best work I can. And as an American, I think we should be really proud here. That’s all I talk about when I’m in the States, bragging about not just Canada, but Canadian design and Vancouver design and the Vancouver scene. It’s one of my most joyful topics, that we do have such an awesome group of people in an awesome place making awesome things. 

Shop Provide's collection by Hinterland in our showroom and online store.