Obsidian Manufacturing was founded by Justin Kooiman, a mechanical engineer who grew up in the display case business. His family ran Kooiman Industries Limited, and Justin learned the trade from the inside out, developing a precise eye for where standard solutions fell short.
The gap he identified was specific: glass-to-glass custom display cases, the kind without visible framing, were rarely done well. The engineering is genuinely difficult, requiring tight fabrication tolerances and instinct built through repetition. Most manufacturers avoided the complexity. Justin built a company around mastering it.
Obsidian exists to serve clients for whom standard solutions are a compromise; museums, jewellery retailers, and galleries where the display has to be as considered as what’s inside it. We’ve grown steadily from our Ontario facility by doing good work and earning referrals from clients who trusted us.
The Logic Exhibit System was invented by David Jensen, an exhibit designer with four decades of experience creating displays for museums and cultural centres across Canada. What he built was a modular system of cases and wall units on a standardised 18-inch grid: lightweight aluminium frames and glass panels that a small staff team could assemble, reconfigure, and disassemble without specialist tools or outside contractors. Durable, elegant, and designed with sustainability in mind from the start.
When Obsidian brought Logic under the same roof as our custom display case business, it created something neither brand had alone. A museum working with us can now draw on both: bespoke permanent cases for their most significant objects, and the Logic System for the changing exhibition programme that keeps an institution relevant year-round.
David remains a guiding voice in the Logic product line, recognised with an Award of Distinguished Service from the Canadian Museums Association and a Golden Anniversary Service Award from the BCMA. That depth of sector involvement is built into the system he designed.
Obsidian Manufacturing serves clients across Canada and the United States. Our work spans institutions whose needs vary considerably, but whose expectations of quality are consistently high.
We also work with architects, interior designers, and exhibit designers who specify our products as part of larger commercial or institutional fit-outs. If you are a designer or design professional looking for a fabrication partner who can execute a custom brief precisely and collaboratively, that is a conversation we welcome.
The Ontario Museum Association represents over 700 museums, galleries, and related organisations across Ontario. Obsidian's membership in the OMA places us within the professional network of the institutions we work with most closely, and it keeps us connected to the standards, guidelines, and conversations that shape how Ontario's museums operate and what they need from their suppliers and partners.
The Canadian Museum Association is the national voice for Canada's museum sector, representing institutions and professionals from every province and territory. Obsidian's CMA membership demonstrates our commitment to the national museum community and our responsibility to the standards that govern display, preservation, and accessibility in Canadian institutions.
David Jensen invented the Logic Exhibit System after four decades designing exhibitions for museums and cultural centres across Canada. As principal and creative director of D. Jensen and Associates Ltd., he understood the gap between institutional ambition and available budget, and built a system that lets curators and designers do excellent work without the cost and waste of building from scratch each time.
David remains active in the museum community through the British Columbia Museum Association, the Coalition of Museums for Climate Justice, and the sector boards where the field’s future gets shaped. That ongoing engagement continues to inform how the Logic System evolves.
Justin Kooiman founded Obsidian Manufacturing after working in his family’s display case business, Kooiman Industries Limited, and developing a specific expertise in the glass-to-glass fabrication techniques that most manufacturers find too demanding to execute consistently well. His background in mechanical engineering gives him the ability to solve structural and design problems that pure craftspeople sometimes cannot, and his years in the industry give him the practical knowledge of what actually works in a museum, a jewellery store, or a cannabis dispensary once a case is in service.
Justin leads every custom project from brief through to installation. He works directly with architects, designers, curators, and retail clients, and his approach to the process is the same regardless of the scale of the project: understand the space, understand the object, and design something that serves both.
Every Obsidian case is designed and fabricated to a specific brief. We do not offer a range of sizes that clients choose from and adapt to their space. We start with your space, your object, and your requirements, and we build from there. The result is a case that fits the environment it was made for, rather than a generic unit accommodated into a space it was not designed for.
Glass-to-glass fabrication is genuinely difficult. The tolerances required to bond, align, and finish glass surfaces without visible structural support are tight. Getting it right requires fabricators with well-developed instinct, not just a good process. The Obsidian team has built enough of these cases to have that instinct, and it shows in the finished product.
Building display cases for museums is different from building them for retail. The preservation requirements, the lighting considerations, the UV protection, the access and security specifications: all of it reflects an understanding of how institutions actually use these cases and what the consequences of getting it wrong look like over time. Our OMA and CMA memberships are one signal of that understanding. The installations we have completed at institutions like the Royal Canadian Mint and the Britannia Mine Museum are a more concrete one.
Bringing Obsidian's custom fabrication capability together with the Logic Exhibit System creates something most manufacturers cannot offer: a single source for both permanent bespoke display cases and a professional modular exhibit system. A museum working with us for a permanent collection case can draw on the same relationship, the same understanding of their space and their standards, when they need to update their temporary exhibition programme.
