When somebody does something really well, is that person an artist or a craftsman?
The work Alfred Petersen does qualifies him for either definition.
His medium is wood, which he works into his own gifts. You see, Petersen doesn’t sell what he makes; he gives it away to those lucky enough to be a family member or friend.
Petersen and his son have been in the business of building homes in the Fremont area for a long time. It’s a family business that incorporates the talents of his son, who designs the houses and takes care of the office work, and his wife, who does the bookkeeping.
Petersen’s fascination with all things wood began at Fremont Junior High School when he had a teacher named Mr. Kildee for two days a week.
“I was fortunate that I had a great FFA teacher,” Petersen said. “We had shop two days a week. When I graduated from Fremont High School, I went to work at the crib and silo company. I have been a woodworker for 57 years -- everything from corn cribs to churches, schools, whatever needed to be built. Along the way I have had some really great teachers.”
His biggest give-away was picture frames to all of his customers. He estimates he has given away from 800 to 900 frames made out of anything from barn wood to walnut.
“About seven or eight years ago,” Petersen reminisced, “women started wanting step stools for the tall kitchen cabinets. I usually personalize them by asking a local artist to paint on them.”
Sometimes he lets them use their own ideas; sometimes he requests a special motif like birds for a bird-lover. Each thing he makes always contains a mouse’s’ tail. He tells the recipients to follow the mouse’s tail and find a smile.
The stools are finely made. Every piece is dovetailed into place. The stools he makes are safe, following the golden ratio — proportion of height to width to depth -- so that anyone using them won’t be likely to take a dangerous spill.
“I cut the dovetails by hand,” he said. “The details aren’t anything I invented. Dovetails have been a major way of holding things together for centuries. Some of the coffins found in the pyramids are held together with dovetails. They have discovered objects in Alaska that are over 5,000 years old held together with whale bones that have been dovetailed together.”
One of his current projects is making “Legacy Boxes” for his brother and three living sisters. He took the lids off the boxes and sent them to family members scattered across the country, asking them to sign or write a message. One lid has traveled to nieces and nephews from Houston to Berkeley, to Minneapolis and has signatures in English and in Chinese with one child’s name sprawled across the top with red marker.
“There are spaces to put all the memorabilia from the grandkids. One sister told him that whenever she feels a little blue, she opens the box and looks at the contents,” he said.
His great-grand nieces often help him in his workshop. Both Allysa and Faythe have learned how to work the tools.
“I told Faythe, who is 11, to design something,” he said.
She drew up the plans for a jewelry box and they made it together. There are drawers for bracelets and such. Two doors on the front of the small cabinet open to reveal spoked wheels mounted into the top to hold necklaces without tangling. The top of the chest lifts up and inside is a compartmented tray that also is removable.
“She made it with me,” Petersen said.
One of his newest projects is making rocking chairs. The chairs are more than the traditional assembly of wood parts. The chairs seats are carefully carved with a special electric tool to give the sitter a comfortable place to relax.
But it is the back that is truly unusual. No spokes here. Petersen glues two thin layers of ash slats and faces those slats with the exposed wood used to construct of the remainder of the chair. Then he bends the glued wood to a form until the wood has accepted the shape.
“Ash is the only wood that has a memory,” Petersen explained.
When one sits on the chair, the back gives slightly against the bones, making for a comfortable sitting.
When Petersen first came across the rocker, he wrote to the maker and asked for directions. The woodworker would not send them until Petersen had submitted a photograph of his work. Petersen passed the standards test and was able to buy the pattern.
Other projects include urns for ashes. He plans to ask a wood carver to incise praying hands on the side of the boxes. A cross has been affixed to the top of the urn.
All the cabinetry in the newly remodeled kitchen of their home is his work. Other examples of his craftsmanship are displayed in furniture pieces and other cabinetry -- most of it in a style called Stickley, a craftsman style popular in the 1920s.
Petersen is leaving a legacy, not only of chests, but of love in the objects he has crafted and given to those people who are important to him. He has no plans to retire, but if he would, “I might sell my rocking chairs on the Internet.”
With an artist like Petersen making them, they would be worth the price.
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