A number of years ago, Wendy Kvalheim wrote a book about the history of Mottahedeh, having bought the company, along with her husband, Grant, and long time friends, Jeff and Pamela Mondschein in 1992. Wendy has been design director and CEO for more than 25 years. The motivation for this enterprise is to make great classic and reproduction designs to tell the human story and express the cultures from where the designs came. "From Drawing Board to Dinner Table" also describes the process of production from the original idea to the end result, as a decorative art object or a dinner plate. Our best selling dinner pattern is Tobacco Leaf, originating in the 18oo's in China and defying all categorization of common dinnerware conceptions of today. If you ask Wendy how she chooses those designs now, she will say " I experience the object or image and if my response to it is immediate and visceral, I have confidence that it is a good design. Then I learn about the story or its origin and find the story fascinating. After that, I try to learn more by reading."⠀⠀⠀