In junior high school Jay Strongwater took an unconventional approach to his book reports. "I would spend six hours making the cover and 10 minutes writing the report," he recalls. "When I got a C, I didn't understand."

These days Strongwater's scoring nothing less than an A for his artistic prowess. His $25 million home-accessories business—comprising be-jeweled figurines, frames and boxes that sell at Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue for $100 (a pair of crystal-encrusted napkin rings) to $1,450 (a frame embedded with 1,600 Swarovski crystals)—has lured such style-minded celebrities as Oprah Winfrey and Elton John as customers. "I mean to buy them as presents," says actress Morgan Fairchild, a Strongwater fan, "but then it's so hard to part with them!"

The younger of two sons raised mostly in Montvale, N.J., by a business executive and a personal shopper, Strongwater, 41, dropped out of the Rhode Island School of Design in 1979 to try his hand at crafting jewelry under his given name, Jay Feinberg. Although the business was a success, by the early 1990s Strongwater's "big, wonderful earrings" had fallen out of fashion, he says.

With the rights to his given name owned by one of the backers of the jewelry company, Strongwater took his mother's maiden name and moved into home design in 1995. Now living in a one-bedroom New York City apartment with his partner of 10 years, Patrick Savoy, 46, a design consultant, Strongwater remains as single-minded today as he was in childhood. "I just want to be creative," he says.

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