Woodworker wins top furniture honors at Boston Mills Artfest

by Erica Peterson

When John Patterson walked into shop class at Nordonia Middle School in the mid-1970s, he knew woodworking was something he was going to do for the rest of his life.

“The wood was calling my name,” he said. “Everyone is making square hot plates, and I’m making little benches that look like violins.”

The Sagamore Hills resident has been honing his craft ever since, and it paid off this summer when he won best in furniture at the prestigious Boston Mills Artfest for an extraordinary table he created out of wood, glass and gears from the former Chrysler plant in Twinsburg.

The feat is even more impressive considering this is only the second year Patterson had pieces accepted into the juried show. In fact, Artfest was the first art show Patterson ever entered. His 15-year-old son Jeremy helped him stage photos of a booth so he could enter the competition last year.

He was honored to even been accepted into the show last year, knowing that some artists try to enter for years. So when he was accepted again this year, he hoped to win some kind of award. He was thrilled to win the top prize for furniture.

Patterson tries to use local wood, and the winning table is no exception. It was created from “a really old cherry tree” on Cyrus Eaton’s property in Sagamore Hills, he said. That, along with the Chrysler gears, makes the table “truly homegrown,” he said.

The idea for the table came from the gears, Patterson said.

“I bought the pile of gears and started moving them around and looking at them and seeing what other people thought,” he said. “As I was showing them my ideas, some people thought I was crazy. Some people can’t see it, and other people said, ‘Wow, would that be neat.’”

The challenge was to put it all together in a way that was interesting and aesthetic, he said, “something you wouldn’t mind having as a conference table or a desk.”

Originally, Patterson thought it would be interesting to use steel beams as the legs of the table, inspired by 1920s-era bridgework around Cleveland. But he consulted an expert who told him steel would be too costly and too heavy to be practical, he said.

So, he decided to try to replicate the look out of wood. “It took a while to figure out the texture I was looking for to make it look like metal,” Patterson said.

He achieved a pretty convincing facsimile, so much so that when the expert saw the finished table, he was fooled.

“He said, ‘What are you thinking?’” Patterson said. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘How are you going to move that?’ I said, ‘I just pick it up with my hands. It’s all made out of wood.’ Here’s a guy who had a steel company and couldn’t believe it.”

Even the Boston Mills Artfest judges didn’t realize the table legs were made out of wood, Patterson said.

When the table won, it was moved to the lobby with the other winners. The judges roped off the artwork and placed signs saying, “Do not touch.” Patterson removed his sign and took down the rope.

“I want people to touch my stuff,” he said. “I want them to walk up to it and feel it and look at it.

“People don’t get to touch art that much. Me, I promote it. I put signs on my stuff saying, ‘Please touch me. I’m not metal.’ Looking at art is one thing, but using it and being able to feel it is totally different.”

From shop class to his own shop

Patterson was born and raised in Sagamore Hills. His parents, Don and Carol, still live in the area. 

He has always been drawn to nature, so working with wood seemed a natural progression.

“I’ve always loved the outdoors, and it was just a great way to put it all together,” he said.

He is extremely grateful to Nordonia High School shop teacher John Ray, who he credits with nurturing his woodworking talent.

“I was building grandfather clocks in high school from scratch,” Patterson said. “I won one of the top awards in the state of Ohio when I was in high school with my grandfather clock, and it wasn’t even finished; it didn’t even have the insides working.”

He graduated in 1981 and got an apprenticeship with Tom Toth at Master Wood Products in Walton Hills. It was there, helping Toth make racing boats, that Patterson really learned how to manipulate wood into curves and other unique shapes.

“He opened my eyes so much more to looking outside the box and realizing wow, there’s nothing that you can’t build out of wood,” Patterson said.

By 1986, he opened his own cabinet shop in Walton Hills called Woods Unlimited. Patterson hired all Nordonia High graduates, who took the same shop classes he did, to help him create custom cabinetry and furniture.

He was able to “retire” at age 49, moving his operations to his South Boyden Road home and getting the freedom to pick and choose the projects he wanted to make.

“Thank God I was fortunate in life, I had a lot of good things going and built my own retirement plan and just started creating pieces, hoping somebody was going to buy them,” Patterson said. “I was always building for other people and under their timeframes. I retired from all the cabinets, fireplace mantles, countertops. If you want something, this is what I’m building. If you want to buy it, you’re more than welcome to.”

And buy, they did. Through word of mouth, he started getting more and more customers for his creations.

Custom urns

Patterson also makes custom urns, which he said is the most difficult things for him to make. “Especially if you know the person and you think, ‘Is this good enough?’” he said.

The second urn he ever created was for his brother.

“That was the hardest piece I ever made. I cried for hours as I’m working and sanding,” Patterson said. “I thought of him as I was building it and thinking I’m trying to bring people’s lives into this unit that I’m building for them.”

Inspired by nature

He is fascinated with natural edge pieces, which retain the look of freshly-hewn wood, and other non-conventional shapes and looks, “instead of being conformed to tables with four legs, that has to be ‘like this.’”

He gets a lot of inspiration from riding through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, which abuts his home.

He prefers to let the wood speak to him and retain its grain and unique look in the finished product.

He has been building with natural edge pieces since the 1980s. He said there used to be a stigma with natural edge, that it’s “too woodsy” for contemporary design.

“Here, I’m putting the stuff in multi-million dollar houses, and it’s fitting into anybody’s décor,” Patterson said.

He still does some custom work, if it fits with his vision.

“I really enjoy working with people and their ideas,” he said. “The neatest thing is to sit down with a husband and wife that one’s north and one’s south, and I can put them together in the middle.”

Patterson loves that each piece he makes is one-of-a-kind, especially after spending years making “thousands of fireplace mantles and cabinets all the same.

“I can’t build two the same because there are not two pieces of wood that are the same, even one after another on a log. Every couple of inches, the wood changes so much.”

His home is filled with his furniture, and just about all of it is for sale, he said.

“Otherwise, I would run out of room,” he joked. “When I get an idea, I just can’t wait to get into the shop and just go to town.”

To see some of Patterson’s work, visit oldforesttables.com. Contact Patterson for custom work at 216-534-3740.

Featured image photo caption: After more than 30 years of perfecting his woodworking, John Patterson had his work recognized by winning the top prize for furniture at the Boston Mills Artfest. Photo by E. Peterson