Christia M. Reade was the daughter of Josiah and Christia Reade; her father was a Chicago native, her mother a New York schoolteacher. Reade studied at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and soon became one of the city’s biggest names associated with the Arts and Crafts movement here. She achieved prominence as a principal designer of the Krayle Company, a domestic decorative arts firm with its office in the Marshall Field Building. Her ambitions took her to study in Paris for two years, probably under the artist Luc-Olivier Merson. When she returned from Europe, Reade opened her own studio at 211 Wabash Avenue, which she maintained until the 1920s.