East Dallas native Richard Wincorn is 76 years old.
When he was in his twenties, around 1970, he found himself graduating from Stanford University and pursuing a secondary teaching certificate at the College of Santa Fe. He studied American history as an undergraduate student but deeply desired to pursue architecture. This delayed dream manifested itself in a new opportunity while he studied in New Mexico.
It was there that he met John Zoltai, a master woodworker. It wasn’t long after that Wincorn decided to work alongside and for him, slowly becoming a craftsman himself.
He worked for Zoltai in the early 1970s for about four years.
That period of time gave Wincorn all the motivation he needed to take on his next step: University of New Mexico’s graduate architecture program.
He spent a year there, getting a more “rounded view of building and construction,” before he came back home to Dallas in 1976 and opened up his own studio.
He was finally in his own space, doing his own work.
That moment of time was almost perfect, but there was just one thing that needed to change. He was located in the basement of a building Downtown, on the corner of Elm and Record Street.
“I just couldn’t stand being in the basement without good natural light,” Wincorn says.
He was on the hunt for a new space. It took some time, but he found one, nestled directly at the intersection of Cayuga Drive and Stevens Street in Casa Linda. Some may now know it as Blue Goat Studio, but back then it was Richard Wincorn Studio.
Purchased in 1978, the 5,000 square-foot building would become Wincorn’s first large solo endeavor.
He took inspiration from other firms alongside his own preferences, utilizing details from Japanese design in the entryway’s front porch, using a post-and-beam construction method, leaning into mid-century modern elements and sourcing materials from other properties in the area.
He had large 6-by-12 wooden columns made from old cattle pens he found at a stockyard in Downtown Dallas.
He used pieces from the demolished Grand Prairie Naval Air Station building for the building’s wood trusses.
He started to get calls and leads about buildings and places with materials he could source from all around the city.
Story after story. Building after building. Scrap after scrap. Wincorn was assembling his dream studio.
It took two years to build.
“I didn’t have quite enough money to finish, so I had to set it aside for a little while and then get back to it,” he says. “I finished in 1980 and worked there until I decided to retire in 2022.”
Before retiring, Wincorn’s studio served as the home base for several types of projects including tables, chairs, traditional style cabinetry and different style doors.
“Just about anything you can think of that is made out of wood, specialty items that went into homes,” he says.
He also had a rotating cast of 10 staff members while he took on some work for well-known Dallas clients and in popular locations. Coca Cola Co.’s corporate offices. Highland Park Village. Munger Place Methodist Church. Trammel Crow Co. Just to name a handful.
Wincorn describes his love for woodworking with one word: intuitive.
Something about it just made sense and everything that led him to it felt “serendipitous.”
