Kipp Stewart, a celebrated American designer, born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania did not lead a charmed childhood. Sent to California to live with distant relatives at a young age, you could call him a self-made man. His furniture designing fate was sealed at 15 when hitchhiking to school he passed a storefront shop and studio on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles with pencil industrial drawings in the windows and fell in love with them. Kipp worked hard, turning down a track and field scholarship at USC and instead enrolled at Chouinard Art Institute in the late 1940s. Again, he worked very hard days and nights becoming a renowned artist, architect, and award-winning designer. He currently resides in Carmel, California and is still painting.