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Creative Paradox

Molly Kinney searched the globe for a career that would satisfy her creative spirit and analytical tendencies. She found it in her basement.

Photo by Eric Moore

Molly Kinney is the consummate businesswoman—tailored clothes, firm handshake, wire-rimmed glasses, the works. She’s the kind of person who remembers appointments, always has business cards on hand, and gives reasoned, practical answers.

She’s not the kind of person you would expect to design aluminum serving bowls that look like oversized metallic bean pods and lacquer trays with cloud formations of copper on sensuous cocoa bases. But so it is: Molly Kinney is the sole designer and president of Cole River Company, the international gift and home décor wholesaler.

Her design aesthetic is not at all businesslike. Tropical vacation is more like it—woven table runners in key lime, glass coasters in pearly orange, and dyed-shell napkin rings. Not surprisingly, Kinney’s work is popular in urban shops from New York to L.A. One of her lacquer bath collections is featured at an exclusive Malibu Beach hotel, and her oversized lacquerware is at Bellagio in Las Vegas. But Cole River is also found in a wide range of catalogs, online stores, and gift boutiques in the Twin Cities metro, from Provisions in Excelsior to Corazon in Minneapolis.

So how did a buttoned-up businesswoman end up designing sexy tableware? It goes back to what Kinney calls her “two-sided juggling act”—an inner war between her left brain and right brain. She spent years (literally) searching the globe for a career that would allow her artistic spirit to soar and satiate her inner nerd. The Anoka native attended Santa Clara University, majoring in business until her right brain urged her to switch to English. She then spent two years after graduation studying Mandarin, teaching English, and backpacking and bicycling in southeast Asia. Then her left brain kicked in, and she earned graduate degrees in China Studies and International Business at Columbia University. She worked as a consultant in joint venture investments between the U.S. and China, and then as Asia Pacific marketing director for Mary Kay Cosmetics.

But she couldn’t run from her right brain for long. Traveling extensively in Asia for Mary Kay, Kinney found herself drawn to local crafts markets and marveled at the simple beauty of what she found. When she connected with a woman who made traditional Vietnamese lacquerware, she took the leap, launching Cole River Company from her Golden Valley home in 2000. Kinney’s style niche is global with a modern twist—her designs have a certain Asian sensibility, but not overtly so. For instance, she substitutes lacquers in vivid red, chartreuse, silver leaf, and other zesty colors for traditional Vietnamese paintings of women carrying buckets of water. She’s prone to create what she calls “statement makers”; her newest collection features a white enamel dishware tribute to cookies splashed in milk.

This season she’s also boosting small bangle-covered votive holders from India and other stocking stuffer-priced items that “better respond to the changing market environment,” she says. Back to that left brain again. Some wars are never won.

Alyssa Ford is associate editor at Midwest Home.

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