Handmade and heartfelt: Potters James Klein and David Reid make and market their profitable KleinReid line of porcelain ware--without letting their marriage glaze over. (gay-owned Businesses).When it comes to running their business, personal and professional partners James Klein and David Reid David Reid may refer to:
Cutting instrument or tool consisting of a pair of opposed metal blades that meet and cut when the handles at their ends are brought together. Modern scissors are of two types: the more usual pivoted blades have a rivet or screw connection between the cutting ends , arranging cutout cut·out n. 1. Something cut out or intended to be cut out from something else. 2. Electricity A device that interrupts, bypasses, or disconnects a circuit or circuit element. 3. prototypes for a series of tea sets and serving pieces on which they're collaborating with 95-year-old Bauhaus designer Eva Zeisel Eva Zeisel (born November 13, 1906) is a Hungarian industrial designer known for her work with ceramics, primarily from the period after she immigrated to the United States. Work from throughout her prodigious career is included in important museum collections across the world. . The couple, known professionally as KleinReid, take minute care with the porcelain vases and bowls they describe as modern-day spin-offs of classic pottery forms. Though demand for their products has soared--their work, priced between $45 and $400, can be found at 200 stores worldwide, including New York's Bergdorf Goodman and Harrods of London--they make all their pieces in-house, even mixing their own porcelain and glazes. "We realized the reason we got into this was because we didn't find what we wanted out there," Reid says, "and having a factory make it wouldn't be what our mission was when we started." Klein and Reid have been in business since 1993, and their professional collaboration is no less spectacular because the pair, who met in the mid 1980s in high school in Tallmadge, Ohio, have also been lovers ever since Klein sailed up to Reid and kissed him on the lips at the local gay bar. "We're always challenged to be honest with each other and not be hurtful but be productive," says Klein. "The trick is not confusing business and the other aspects of your life." Klein and Reid's inspiration comes from such far-flung sources as American diner china, antique Asian celadons, and Dutch tulipieres, which inspired their crushingly elegant series of rose bowls and tulip tulip [Pers.,=turban], any plant of the large genus Tulipa, hardy, bulbous-rooted members of the family Liliaceae (lily family), indigenous to north temperate regions of the Old World from the Mediterranean to Japan and growing most abundantly on the steppes vases. Aside from the Zeisel line, which they launched in January, KleinReid's most recent line is Mudra mudra In Buddhism and Hinduism, a symbolic gesture of the hands and fingers used in ceremonies, dance, sculpture, and painting. Hundreds of mudras are used in ceremony and dance, often in combination with movements of the wrists, elbows, and shoulders. , a kind of cosmic take on cornucopia cornucopia (kôr'ny  kō`pēə), in Greek mythology, magnificent horn that filled itself with whatever meat or drink its owner requested. vases used by U.S. flower shops starting in the 1930s. But their chief inspiration comes from each other. "Pottery is like a relationship. It's always changing. There's so much to know about it that you'll never know," says Klein. "It's the same reason we are together. I will never understand David, and it's a constant challenge--there's something there I need to know, and I know I never will. But it's the process of trying to understand that is so attractive." Find links to other stories about KleinReid and to outlets that sell their work at www.advocate.com Quittner has written for Business Week, Gourmet, and MSNBC MSNBC Microsoft/National Broadcasting Company . |
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