Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Skinger moved to Alburg Springs in northwestern Vermont permanently in 1946, following World War II.
He had purchased his 1880s house in the late 1930s, following a fishing trip with friends to Missisquoi Bay – the northernmost part of Lake Champlain.
Though largely self-taught, he studied metal working in England at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1951 on the GI Bill.
As a child, his mother, Rose Gaier Skinger, often scolded him for wasting heat by melting metal in the furnace of their house in Worcester.
They moved from Massachusetts, where they had both been stationed during WWII, to the Alburg Springs house in the Lake Champlain Islands he had been renovating.
In 1958, the family moved to Stowe, where Skinger continued to work in jewelry and sculpture in the barn he renovated for a workshop and showroom.
When Joe was at London Central School of Arts and Crafts in the early 1950s, he saw a piece of jewelry titled “slave ring” at the British Museum.
Joe hired Gay Bessette, his top metals and jewelry student at Fletcher Farm Craft School, beginning their ten-year association at Silver by Skinger.
A successful and well known designer and craftsman in hand wrought silver jewelry by vocation, Joe's greatest creative drive went into his work in sculpture.
Beginning with highly original and unusual molten silver sculptures, his work went on to other mediums including cast bronze, wood and fiber glass.
Warhol's work had a big effect on him and Skinger's sculpture took a major turn in material, style and concept from anything that came before.
This collection was large in scale and was stored in the upper level over the shop when the house changed hands in the early 1970s.
The Albright Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY pursued him to have a show of his sculpture; however, Joe's ultimate goal was to exhibit his work at MoMA.
Sumner Crosby, an art historian from Yale University, was a supporter and provided contacts for Skinger.
Barbara Knapp Hamblett, former curator of the Shelburne Museum, in a letter to the editor of the Burlington Free Press wrote: This craftsman (Joe Skinger) deserves to have his name returned to the forefront of committed craftspeople and designers who believed that through their ingenuity and skill of their hands Vermont’s beauty and simplicity could be transformed into works of art.
They set the foundation for fine crafts and art to be valued as a vital part of our state’s cultural heritage.
The Vermont Crafts Council, in anticipation of its 20th anniversary in 2010, launched a multi-faceted, collaborative initiative encompassing documentation, interpretation, and acquisition.
Project research includes archival study, oral history interviews, field photography, and curatorial survey/evaluation.
Two volumes of information including photos of his jewelry and sculpture, graphics of ads and logos and copies of correspondence and articles were given to the Vermont Ski Museum in Stowe, VT on the 40th anniversary of his death in January 2007.