Shapers have been doing some pretty wacky things with surfboard design recently. New, lighter materials, asymmetric shapes, and only God knows what Slater is riding these days. Heck, one shaper even went so far as to make a surfboard that doubles as a snowboard. It seems like the sky is the limit with design, and we couldn’t be more excited about it.
Meet Larry Fuller. Larry is a wood surfboard craftsman from California whose amazing works of art have been catching fire for their unique quality they bring to board manufacturing. His surfboards are both beautiful and functional, although most of them are displayed as art. Larry shapes surfboards from 3,000-year-old reclaimed redwood trees, and a number of them have been appraised over $100,000. Pricey? Yes. Radical? Most definitely.
Photo: Turtle Bay Resort.
Recently, Larry and a number of other shapers and surfers, including Kelly Slater, Jeff Clark, Carl Ekstrom, Jim Phillips, John Cherry, Reynolds “Renny” Yater, and Al Merrick, participated in an exhibit on the North Shore called Surfers and Shapers (also the name of his film). The exhibit focused on Larry’s journey to bring together the world’s best surfers and board shapers to build the ultimate wooden surfboards from the rarest woods on Earth.
“I’m honored and humbled to be allowed to create this project,” said Fuller. “I’ve learned so much about the water, commitment, and creativity, along with lives lived in the creation of objects that bring people joy. I know the importance of giving these amazing men a voice and visibility into their worlds. I’ve really stopped working on everything else to see this project come to completion. This story of wood, will, and water just burns in my heart.”
