Paul Secon Biography
Paul Secon (1916-2007) was an American entrepreneur and singer-songwriter, who co-founded Pottery Barn with his brother Morris in 1950. Secon was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, the son of immigrants from Russia. By 1950, he was a music editor for Billboard and Variety and a creative songwriter having written for Nat King Cole and The Mills Brothers (among many others) while living in New York City, when he then learned of a business opportunity from Morris . Thus, together with his brother, he founded Pottery Barn and, a year later, an article in The New Yorker was already praising the shop. Secon remained store manager, while Morris, who was also musically inclined, became principal horn of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and teacher at the Eastman School of Music. In 1959 Secon began making extensive trips to Europe in search of new product lines and asked Morris to help him run the store. In 1966, Secon sold the company to Morris and moved to Denmark, where he continued his previous career as a musician and writer. In 1980, Secon returned to the United States and settled in Manhattan before moving to Rochester in 1997, where he died in his home at the age of 90.
