Born in Tolima in 1948 and son of a liberal father and a conservative mother, José Cristóbal knows what violence means. Running away from political persecution, he traveled through Antioquia and the Caribbean Coast. He ended up having to endure domestic violence, since his father abandoned him and his mother. That is why they had to return to San Antonio, Tolima. His upbringing, as many Colombian children’s, came to be entirely in his mother’s, his grandmother’s, and his aunt-in-law’s hands. He speaks of them with great fondness as the sources of his artisanal talent and as the examples they were for him when he witnessed them work tirelessly. After the thousand labors of home and field, Sunday was for bathing the children, washing the clothes, embroidering, and machine-sewing. He, who was good at drawing and had a steady hand, made colored figures on the weavings and fixed his espadrilles. He remembers he spent his childhood helping at home. At four in the morning, he ground the corn to make arepas and brought yucca to grind and give to the chickens and pigs. He also took the cane to give to the horses, mules, and donkeys. He would then herd the livestock to milk the cows and, many times, take the milk into town, which was more or less an hour away, to sell it. “It’s not like you could say I woke up sick or I can’t, none of that,” he says without restraint and without complaint.

Being the man of the house, he had to go with the muleteer to do different chores around the farm. It was with him that he learned new things: “sewing the break strap of a packsaddle, using the herding and capotera needles,” all of the different stitching techniques needed for horse and mule saddles. “You had to sew and become skillful at it,” he recounts and reminds us that it was a delicate craft because the stitches had to be made with extreme care to not hurt the animal’s skin. He tells all of this as an appetizer, for Juan Cristóbal is not a sewer, even though he has mastered the trade. He is also not a horn, coconut, or ivory carver, although he has mastered the techniques and has performed the craft for years. He found his calling in woodcarving, trade that he has been practicing for decades but that he mastered in 2006 when he entered the school of arts and trades. There, not only did he shine with the innate talent he had from the experience of working with his hands without interruption since he was a child, but he became a renowned teacher.

His life is seasoned with numerous adventures and tribulations that made him who he is today, including the reported abduction of his first girlfriend: a small excess of an overprotective mother that led him to celebrate his nineteenth birthday in jail. He also wanted to become a policeman when he was young, with such bad luck that one of his brothers, who was in the military, got murdered and branded as a guerilla fighter. When José Cristóbal started investigating what had happened, he got was “recommended” not to continue doing it. All of this to say that this chapter in his life caused many admissions into and escapes from jail that led him to be confined for large amounts of time, during which he found artisanal trades: sources of personal growth and redemption. When he was a recluse, he learned engraving and metal framework, miniature sculpture, woodcarving, and ivory carving of billiard balls. Just recently a museum was established in what was Ibagué’s Panopticon. There, he told his story as craftsman: “I am really very proud of what I do,” he says excitedly.

Ever since, his life has been wood. He began restoring it in colonial houses, a job that gave him recognition and that he combined with all the cabinetmaking work he did at home in the houses that began requesting him for his talent. Then, because of the insistence of one of his customers, who coincidentally ended up being the daughter of one of his childhood godfathers, he enrolled at the Santo Domingo School of Arts and Trades, later naturally becoming a master instead of a student due to his unquestionable skills. He knew how to make the best of his abilities and how to add to them the many layers of knowledge he received there, giving it the sophistication and finishes that today they characterize him today. Moreover, he became the worthy successor of his wood inlay teacher. Nowadays, past his seventies, he smiles because of the life he has had and does not deny his past but shows it as an example in the growth of a vocation.