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'I feel her here': Lakeshore family starts custom lantern business after mother's unexpected death

The father-daughter pair has sold lanterns to over 700 customers all over the U.S.

FERRYSBURG, Mich. — Todd Johnson was struggling to find direction to his life after the unexpected death of his wife, Cindy, two and a half years ago.

So the 56-year-old Spring Lake man, a longtime photographer and graphic artist, joined up with his daughter, Kaila, to create a wooden lantern business called Four Crows Creative Studio. Johnson’s son, Kevin, also helps in the studio.

With his children grown and a lot of time on his hands following his wife’s death, Johnson explored the internet and found that he liked the idea of making wooden lanterns.

“I couldn’t sit around staring at the walls,” he said.

He started out designing lanterns with lighthouses, while Kaila contributed wildlife designs. Kevin has since come up with a beehive containing all of its removable parts.

“It took forever to come up with a name for the business,” Johnson said. “I didn’t want anything with lake, lakeshore, river or laser in it.”

That’s when Kaila suggested they name it after a decal on the wall that Cindy had purchased some time ago.

“My mom passed away in September 2017, and it hit us all really hard, as it was sudden and unexpected,” Kaila said, explaining her interest in the work. “She was an amazing woman and role model, and a damn good artist to boot. She spent her entire life creating all kinds of art, and I can only aspire to be as good as her one day.”

The decoration had three crows sitting on a branch and one crow flying away.

“The one flying away represents Cindy,” Johnson said. “The other three are the rest of us.”

“I guess it’s kind of in memory of her, now that I think about it,” he said. “Right away, it felt just right.”

Johnson said the lanterns follow along with his line of work.

“Ninety percent is in the artwork, which drives the laser,” he said.

The wood, mostly maple and cherry, is sourced through a cabinetmaker next door to his Ferrysburg studio.

Johnson said that his first design was Grand Haven’s south pier, based off a 5-by-2.5-foot stained-glass window that he and Cindy designed for a contractor for a bathroom project.

Kaila designs the “non-local” stuff like the honeybees and their most popular seller, the birch trees.

Newer items soon to be featured include Kaila’s Spirit Animal collection. An owl and a sea turtle have already been designed. On the front of the lantern is the animal engraving. On one side you’ll find information about that animal and on another side there will be descriptive words such as: understanding, faithful, peaceful and determined.

Johnson also showed off a model beehive, designed by Kevin, with removable drawers and panels. Johnson said he hopes to make this into a kit, and maybe have a kit designed for elementary school children that comes complete with a coloring book.

He is most proud of the model kit he designed featuring the outer lighthouse on Grand Haven’s south pier. The $189 kit comes with all wood pieces, an assembly manual and the light kit. It’s a time-consuming project, so Johnson says that if you want him to make it for you, it would probably cost about $650.

A fully assembled and painted model was sold for $700 during a fundraising auction at the Grand Haven Eagles during Winterfest. The proceeds from that auction, and part of the proceeds from the sale of the kit, will be donated to the Grand Haven Lighthouse Conservancy, Johnson said.

Johnson said that he used a set of blueprints from 1921, as well as a lot of photos that he took for reference, to create the 1/96th-scale model. The kit produces a 25-inch-long section of the pier. Johnson said if he did a kit for the entire length of the pier at that scale, it would be 25 feet long.

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Johnson said it took years of thinking about it before he came up with a plan, and it wasn’t until he used aerial photos that he felt he finally had the size of the pier accurate.

He is experimenting with different types of wood in hopes of creating a model project of the round inner light, as well as other lighthouses on the Great Lakes.

Paint isn’t supplied with the model because the pier looks different under different lighting conditions, so people should choose the colors that they want, Johnson said.

Local retired electrical engineer Joe Uridell designed the circuit for the blinking light in the lighthouse.

Johnson said he hopes someday to be able to make the business his retirement job. In the meantime, he continues his graphic artist work “to pay the bills.”

The lanterns can be found locally at The Village Baker, The Baker’s Wife and the Tri-Cities Historical Museum. An exclusive design will be made for the gift shop in the Grand Haven lighthouse, once it opens.

The family’s work can also be found on Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Etsy under Four Crows Creative Studio.

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