Heath Combs
\nHIGH POINT \u00e2\u20ac\u201d H. Thomas \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tom\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Keller, a longtime furniture designer from High Point, died unexpectedly Sept. 16 in Charleston, S.C. He was 70.
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\nKeller, who attended Parsons School Of Design in New York and Kendall School of Design in Grand Rapids, Mich., was a free-lance furniture designer for many companies. He created collections including Atrium Court for Bernhardt and Enchantment for Henredon.<\/p>\n
In 1961, he started H. Thomas Keller & Associates in High Point and was active in the firm until his death.<\/p>\n
In 1981, Keller was among the first furniture designers to a CAD, computer-aided design system, helping pioneer its use in the industry. He continued to use the latest computers, color laser printers and digital equipment until his death.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He knew that many hands on drawing boards could not give the client a picture of their new designs with the desired speed, especially for the six-month furniture market cycle. As a result, he turned to computers,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Frank Tothill, a design and marketing consultant and former Lily Co. executive who was a friend and associate of Keller for 43 years.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153His business was growing and he wanted quick response. He couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hire enough people to keep up with his business so he had to use computers,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Tothill said.<\/p>\n
Keller was also known as a quiet designer, avoiding publicity and preferring to keep his work anonymous when possible, Tothill said. Keller traveled the world gathering an extensive library furniture and architecture to use a reference points for design.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153His favorite statement to me was, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWe need to design a fresh look,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Tothill said.<\/p>\n
He is survived by his wife, daughter and sister.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Heath Combs HIGH POINT \u00e2\u20ac\u201d H. Thomas \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tom\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Keller, a longtime furniture designer from High Point, died unexpectedly Sept. 16 in Charleston, S.C. He was 70.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-furniture-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indonesia-furniture.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}