Furniture maker Jason Radcliffe's designs are inspired by Cleveland's rust-belt beauty
October 27, 2009, 5:36PM
 Photographs by John Kuntz / The Plain DealerDealerJason Radcliffe, owner of 44 Steel, at work on a drafting table. Forty-four was his number when he played high school basketball for Rocky River, and it just stuck. "All that light? It'll burn you -- you gotta be at least five feet away for it not to burn you," he says.
The ambassador of the Cleveland furniture design scene is as tall and lanky as a young Lincoln and sports intricate, richly colored tattoos up and down his long arms.
He's crazy about snowboarding and his girlfriend, Natalie, the artist responsible for his Technicolor sleeves.
And Jason Radcliffe loves steel -- the way it melts away like butter when he touches a MIG welder to it, the unexpected dark rainbow patterns in its coating.
For your information
What: F*SHO, an exhibit of contemporary design.
When: 7-11 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6.
Where: 1300/Third Gallery, 1300 West 78th St., Suite 3, Cleveland.
More info: 44steel.com.
His workshop is inside Berrington Pumps & Systems, an industrial process equipment company in Avon owned by his family. That's where he learned to admire the hard, smooth lines of Cleveland's vital metal and to weld.
He talks about his influences -- the old industrial buildings in the Flats, famed designer Viktor Schreckengost, 18th- and early 19th-century Industrial Revolution-era machinery -- as he takes a break from fashioning a drafting table that will be on view at F*SHO, an exhibition next month in Cleveland of Radcliffe's steel furniture and the work of four other industrial designers.
"The five of us came together and said, 'We need to do something in Cleveland showing Cleveland design, because we are somebody,' " Radcliffe says. "And Cleveland should know what's going on here and what we're doing."
Radcliffe and his partners -- John Arthur, Louis Erste, Michael McMillin and Grant Smrekar -- also want to show the tastemakers on the coasts that Cleveland is more than a flyover city. It's a destination point on the contemporary-design map.
"We want to show Cleveland has a bunch of people that know what they're doing -- not just New York or L.A. -- Cleveland's just as good as anywhere else," Radcliffe says.
In an e-mail, McMillin is slightly more blunt: "There are a lot of talented designers in Cleveland and I think it's time people knew that instead of buying from national chains and big-box stores."
The talents in F*SHO are young -- all are in their 30s, born or raised in Ohio and now call Cleveland home. They hold other jobs to pay the rent, as bartenders, carpenters and general contractors. Radcliffe still builds oil tanks and other equipment in the family warehouse. Smrekar works there with him part time.
Their clean, simple pieces -- whether it be a stool made of recycled bicycle parts or a credenza fashioned from hemlock -- rely heavily on salvaged industrial detritus or reclaimed wood.
 The Cleveland design style "is industry driven," Jason Radcliffe says (here marking the spots where he will attach hinges on his steel drafting table). "We're all industrial designers and we just want to see that hard, clean, smooth look ,which is Cleveland."
Arthur explains: "I'm very interested in taking construction debris and repurposing it into functional pieces of art, as opposed to taking up more space in the local landfill." In a loft he renovated on Cleveland's West Side, Arthur made a bathroom sink from an old steel shopping cart he found abandoned in the building.
Radcliffe pulls his hoodie around his head so sparks don't fly into his ears or dance down his shirt and begins to weld a steel frame, the white glow from his arc a little exploding star.
Inspiration is everywhere. The heavy wood floor of a barn in Sandusky from the 1890s becomes the top of one of Radcliffe's coffee tables; steel from an old fence found at a shop on Lorain Road is transformed into an elaborate staircase snaking through La Strada on East Fourth Street downtown. Radcliffe is especially fond of the hulking 100-year-old presses still waiting to rumble to life in shuttered warehouses dotting the city's landscape.
Cleveland's infernal rust-belt beauty is the creative engine that fuels Radcliffe's brand, 44 Steel.
"Some people go into one of those old factories and say, 'Oh, it's dirty, gross -- it smells weird here!' Doesn't bother me. I'm like, 'Look at that! Someone built that machine 100-and-some-years ago and it's better than what could ever be built today.' "
Radcliffe's enthusiasm for all things local is infectious, even on the road. In May, he showed his Mouse Desk -- a sleek piece with a drilled mouse-hole pull that, when tugged, opens a hidden, stainless steel drawer -- at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City. The monster, four-day showcase in spring boasted more than 500 exhibitors representing 34 countries.
He hung a sign on a wall -- 44 Steel by Jason Radcliffe, Cleveland, Ohio -- and people stared.
Cleveland???? they asked.
"Yeah," Radcliffe answered.
"Is there really a design scene in Cleveland?"
"Well, yeah," he said, ever polite, "there is."
His East Coast debut paid off. Since then, Radcliffe has sold 15 Mouse Desks retailing at $1,155 apiece, and has orders for five more.
Still, though Radcliffe's signature piece is in homes and showrooms across the country, it has yet to make it into a Northeast Ohio den or office.
 Jason Radcliffe showed this piece, the Mouse Desk, at New York City's prestigious International Contemporary Furniture Fair. He originally dubbed it "the Vik" as an homage to hometown, internationally known industrial designer Viktor Schreckengost until he figured out that nobody got it.
"As of right now, no one in Cleveland owns one, which I think is sorta bad, you know?" he says. "My two biggest customers are in New York City and Houston."
Radcliffe hopes F*SHO will convince area interior designers, architects and retailers that buying local is buying smart.
"I'm hoping people will see it's easier to have this stuff locally done than order this expensive piece from Italy that takes six months to get and costs thousands of dollars," he says.
He does have a client in Mentor, a woman who found a vanity by a high-end designer in a magazine and loved it but balked at the $3,000 price tag.
"I'd made her a mirror before, so she talked about it with me and I said, 'Yeah, we can do [something like that].' "
Right here in her own back yard. |
