Lynn Chase

Caroline "Lynn" P. Chase of Southfield, Massachusetts, passed away on July 30, 2025, at Berkshire Medical Center after a courageous seven-month battle with an aggressive cancer. Despite the challenges, Lynn continued to inspire those around her with her strength and determination.
How do you begin to talk about the extraordinary life of Lynn Chase?
A native New Yorker, Lynn Chase graduated from Bennett College and completed her studies at the New York School of Interior Design. Lynn was a lover of animals from birth, and had a habit of rescuing any animal in need, from birds to squirrels, sneaking them into her room and nursing them back to health. This deep connection with nature was a driving force in her life and work.
In the 1970s, Lynn traveled extensively through Africa and South America, and it was there she found the inspiration that shaped the rest of her life. Those travels led to her spectacular body of work - paintings and sketches, porcelain dinnerware collections and giftware, and home furnishing designs unlike anything else, which she brought to the world first for Lenox china, and then under the name Lynn Chase Designs, which she launched in 1988.
Lynn's collections celebrated jaguars, monkeys, tigers, parrots, sea life, and many more, becoming not just beautiful objects, but statements of her deep fascination with wildlife. Lynn Chase's Jaguar Jungle design won Best Pattern and the Impact Award at the International Tabletop Association in 1991 despite being told that no one would "eat off animals, or black plates." Her stunning Harmony Bowl paid homage to wildlife
species of the land, sea, and air from the seven continents, and was one of her favorite designs.
Her following was large and loyal. People from all over the world collected her work. Her friends often shared stories of being at a dinner party and finding her designs on the table. It was striking that people hadn't just bought her tableware because it was beautiful; they bought it because it spoke to them personally. Lynn's love of wildlife went far beyond her art. She founded the Lynn Chase Wildlife Foundation, an independent nonprofit dedicated to preserving endangered animals around the globe. The fund has contributed much-needed funds to the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia and the Amboseli Trust for Elephants in Kenya (where she also served on its board), among others.
She was a woman of great integrity, of immense talent, and of a generosity that matched her passions. Lynn touched so many lives, and while her loss is felt deeply, her work, her vision, and her compassion will live on in the hearts of everyone who knew her-and in the homes of people around the world who still set their tables with her creations.
Lynn Chase was predeceased by her father, Paul Jerome Chase, and her mother, Mary (Jennings) Chase of New York. On May 2, 1998, Lynn married Richard (Dick) A. Flintoft in New York, and together they enjoyed a full and happy life in New York City and Southfield, Massachusetts, until he died in 2020.
Surviving Lynn are her sister Susan (Edward "Ned") Culver of Wayland, MA and Charleston, SC, and brother Brewster (Marilyn) Jennings Chase of Ithaca, NY; her nieces Anne Prentice Culver Bird (Norfolk, VA) and Jennings Lee Camerson (Charleston, SC); her stepsons Philip Grant (Jennie) Flintoft of Millerton, NY, and Peter (Yuliya) Flintoft of New York, NY.
Lynn leaves countless beloved friends in the Massachusetts Berkshires, Connecticut, New York, throughout the U.S., and around the world, all of whom she loved and who loved her. Our lives will never be the same without her. Lynn was grateful to her outstanding doctors and medical providers at Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital. A Celebration of Life for Lynn is being planned for this autumn.
For those so inclined, we know Lynn would have appreciated donations made in her memory to the Cheetah Conservation Fund or the Amboseli Trust for Elephants.
Finnerty & Stevens Funeral Home