Starstruck: Star Boxes are not perfect. They are all different. Star Boxes are a little off-center. They always have at least one star in the design.

The above poem, or disclaimer, or caveat, or what-you-will, is printed on a small card that accompanies each of Jackson interior designer Michael Grogan's signature tabletop boxes.

Selecting just one adjective to describe his collection of custom-fabricated boites is as difficult as picking a single adjective to describe the artist and designer himself. Colorful, whimsical, humorous, old-soul, and younger-than-springtime are good words with which to begin.

The boxes themselves had an unusual beginning.

"Well, it all kind of got started back around 1990," Grogan recalls. "My dear friend Charme Tate and I were sitting in Primos, trying to come up with a contribution to a silent auction for a local charity. I had this little set of unfinished nesting boxes I'd ordered from a toy catalog, and we just kind of decided to play around with decorating one. We did it, someone bought it, and, well, Star Boxes were born!"

Shortly thereafter, Grogan premiered a few more of them at the first St. Andrew's Designer Showhouse. Fabric designer Judy Ford, now of Oxford, was one of his first clients. A savvy businessperson as well as a fine artist, Ford counseled Grogan to document his work photographically. He also copyrighted the product and registered the name with the Library of Congress. And then he began to take orders.