Fred Press was born in 1919 soon after his parents emigrated to the US from Russia. For four years in the 1930s and as a teenager he won the Proctor and Gamble Soap Sculpture annual award. He taught at the Vesper George School of Art in Boston. He was a painter and sculpture and many of his works have garnered critical acclaim and awards and he has pieces held in museum collections. But it is for his work with Rubel and Company that most remember his name. From early1950s and for the next thirty years he was chief designer and executive Vice President of Rubel and Co. where he revolutionized the 5th Avenue NYC giftware industry even winning a good design award from MoMA. He was also a member of the Sixth Air Force during WWII and stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. In 2012 he died at the age of 92.