competitor, Tiffany Studios, and to guide the company to high profitability. Oliver Speers Kimberly Oliver Speers Kimberly was born on June 20, 1871, in Guilford, Connecticut. His parents were Eli Kimberly (1820-1874), a lumber inspector, and Mary Kerr (1845-1916), who was Eli's second wife. Oliver had a younger brother, Harry Standish Kimberly (1873-1966), who was born a year before their father's death. After Eli died, Mary Kerr Kimberly took her sons to New York City to live with her mother. Oliver's artistic talents were developed there, as were the artistic abilities of his younger brother. Harry designed lamp bases and shades for the Duffner & Kimberly Company. (A note: Oliver's half-brother, Arthur Stone Kimberly (1857-1933), was a director of the Duffner & Kimberly Company, and most likely was an investor, as well.) Oliver Kimberly worked for Tiffany in the window department, but was transferred to the lamp department. He worked there a short time before he left to enter a partnership with Thomas Calvert (1873-1961), a transplanted Englishman and also one of Tiffany's artists. The Calvert and Kimberly Company lasted until late 1905, when Kimberly entered into this partnership with Francis Joseph Duffner. Key staff Together, Duffner and Kimberly hired several important artists, among them, Hamilton Tappan Howell (1872–1952), a designer responsible for many of the early strong lamp designs. They hired as their chief designer Gazo Foudji (1853–1916), also known in contemporary sources as Fudji and Fudjiyama, who was a famous Japanese artist of the period and a graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Foudji had also worked for Tiffany and prior to that, in 1905 and 1906, for the Roseville Pottery Company and the Weller Pottery Company. Another important stained glass artist of the firm was John Gordon Guthrie (1874–1961), a Scottish immigrant, known professionally as "J. Gordon Guthrie", who first worked for Tiffany. Guthrie had designed windows for Tiffany Studios and also designed windows for Duffner & Kimberly. A large, early example of his stained glass windows, dating from 1910 while he was employed by the Duffner & Kimberly firm is found in Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral, the cathedral church of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri, located in Kansas City, Missouri. Guthrie left Tiffany in 1906 and worked for Duffner & Kimberly until 1914. He then worked with Henry Wynd Young (1874–1923) until Young's death in 1923, when Guthrie took over the management of Young's