Woodturner Gianni Di Gregorio earns Turning of the Week for pierced vessel

Gianni Di Gregorio’s “Simple Piercing” stood out because it made restraint look hard. Russ Braun chose the piece as Turning of the Week on April 20, 2026, and the vessel earned notice for an eight-plus-inch form with very thin turned walls, a disciplined piercing pattern, and a finish that carried an organic color with a blush of red at the rim.

The surface work is what gives the piece its charge. Braun pointed to the long, slim straight piercing lines and the way the twisting and horizontal elements play against each other, creating the illusion of motion without losing the read of a stable vessel. That balance matters in woodturning because pierced work can tip fast from elegant to crowded, but Di Gregorio kept the layout clear enough that the form still reads first and the embellishment follows.

Braun also made plain why the piece was more than a decorative exercise. Straight piercing lines are already difficult to execute cleanly; on a wall this thin, the margin for error narrows further. The challenge is not only cutting the openings, but keeping the pattern coherent across the curve of the vessel so the geometry stays aligned as the form turns away from the viewer. In that sense, “Simple Piercing” is an object that looks accessible at a glance and exacting under closer inspection.

The selection also fit the broader rhythm of the American Association of Woodturners forum, where Turning of the Week functions as a weekly showcase rather than a one-off pat on the back. The previous week’s honor went to Ethan Hoff’s “Basket Illusion Platter,” another sign that the forum is giving equal weight to surface treatment, visual trickery and form. That mix keeps the conversation moving beyond basic bowl and spindle work and into the territory where design choices become the point.

The AAW’s scale helps explain why a single piece can carry that much weight. The organization says it has more than 360 chapters worldwide, and its American Woodturner journal archive reaches back to 1986. Against that backdrop, Di Gregorio’s vessel lands as both recognition and reference material, the kind of turned work that other makers will study for how the piercing, wall thickness and finish all support the same idea.