After a rare bone disease put him in the hospital, and with a young family to support, in 1950, he was hired as general manager of the Herman Miller Furniture Company’s Venice, California office.
After a tenure at Herman Miller, he left his position and moved his family to Northern California, in 1953, to open up his own art studio.
Following various shows and the subsequent breakup of his marriage in 1962, he moved first to Nevada City in 1963, and then to the Point Reyes Peninsula in 1964, where he designed a large collection of sculpture jewelry while working with Judy Perlman.
For the last 31 years of his life he lived in a group of Coast Miwok Indian cottages at Lairds Landing, on Tomales Bay, fifty miles north of San Francisco.
Clayton Lewis was born in Snoqualmie, Washington and died at his home at Laird’s Landing, Point Reyes National Seashore, California.