Lee Siegelson attended Cranbook, a famous preparatory school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. This formative experience influenced the way he views the important art object he sells. The school, like Cartier's Mystery Clock Model A and the great pieces of the Art Deco movement, employed the notion of deviation from the assembly line mentality of Henry Ford. The Model A clock by Cartier was produced entirely by hand by a team of master artisans, taking nearly a year to complete, in contrast to Henry Ford's Model T, the 1908 automobile symbolizing the efficacy of mechanized mass production.
Cranbrook was designed and built by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen who was given an unbridled approach to design and architecture by founder and Arts and Crafts proponent George Gough Booth. The beauty of the school's architecture and horticulture are intended to inspire and influence the students as much as their classes. Siegelson has applied the ideals employed at Cranbrook in his work and his life: simplicity, uniqueness, and detail. Siegelson's interest in fine objects is the opposite of the commercialism and mass production ever-present in the jewelry industry today. Siegelson focuses on pieces designed without compromise and with the utmost quality.
As a reminder of the importance of trusting your intuition, this quotation by the architect Louis Sullivan is posted on the door of the Siegelson safe, “Imagination is the greatest of man’s single working powers—and the trickiest; as the intellect is the frailest, the most subject to derangement, the most given to cowardice and betrayal, unless it be held steady and sane by the power of Instinct.”
