Creative Accents Designers
From a gnarled oak tree to a sleek pocket knife, award winning San Francisco industrial designer Rick Lee finds inspiration in everyday objects. An innovator at the vanguard of modern design, Lee combines rational thinking with radical influences to create minimalist pieces with deft whimsical touches.
Upon obtaining a degree in industrial design, Lee began his career in Chicago with notable furniture manufacturers and design studios. Relocating to Milan, he then honed his distinctive artistic style seen in his work today. Incorporating minimal principles of Bauhaus with experience he gained collaborating at the irreverent Studio Alchimia, Lee nurtured a unique aesthetic that is both vibrant and charismatic.
After more than 15 years of multi-disciplinary exploration in San Francisco, Chicago, and Milan, Lee and his team now design for major furniture manufacturers and independent clients including Bonaldo, Frag, Magis, Surface Magazine, Bombay sapphire, American Leather, DWR, Creative Accent rugs and the San Francisco Opera Guild. His work has appeared in movie sets and in celebrity homes of Bruce Willis and Michael Jordon. Lee’s designs have also been widely exhibited and reviewed in notable publications such as the New York Times, Metropolitan Home, Surface Magazine, Case De Abitare, ID, Metropolis, Interni and Dwell.
Lee’s theoretical approach to design hinges on the tactics of an actor. Working with a wide range of materials and resources, he prefers not to work with any one particular material on a consistent basis. Lee considers “California cuisine” an apt metaphor for his work—a mix of seemingly incongruent ingredients carefully combined to create something new and fresh.
http://www.rickleedesign.com/see rick's rugs
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With a passion for creativity and design, Nathan Gilreath approaches each new project with a balanced sense of reality and unlimited possibility. Raised in Mammoth Lakes, a small town nestled in the heart of California's Eastern Sierra Mountain range, he developed a great love for organic designs found throughout the natural world. Having long been a student of Nature's canvas, a perceptive attention to elemental balance, space, scale, color, and variation accompanies all design efforts. Viewing every opportunity to create as a new challenge to design not only a stand out product but also an object that will develop a resounding sense of harmony within its surroundings.
Currently living and designing in Los Angeles, Nathan's love for art and music keep him constantly excited about new forms of creative expression. By working on diverse aspects of product design through his personal studio, The Progressive Nature, an ability to understand various disciplines and reach diverse demographics has emerged as an invaluable trait.
Working within the Creative Accents design labs and manufacturing facilities, Nathan has developed a great perspective of procedures available, allowing a full exploration of textures, patterns and movement within each design. Continually looking for new territories of expression has allowed some great new developments in our Creative Accents portfolio and we are glad to be showcasing Nathan's work.
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Colleen Schaeffer, a third generation Creative Accents family member, was born with a keen eye for color. Her natural talent for design and color coupled with a lifelong immersion in the textile industry has caused Colleen’s skills to flourish and mature over time. Her worldwide travels through Europe and Latin America have influenced her designs, exposing her to a variety of patterns, colors, and flavors from around the globe.
Colleen’s fresh perspective on color has also helped us expand our ever-evolving color palette. We are proud to have a member of the third generation so essentially involved in the design aspect of our business.
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