Kay and Stemmer


Sarah Kay has been designing bespoke furniture since graduating from the renown Parnham College in Dorset in1996.

She has established a reputation for furniture that combines sculptural forms, elegance, exquisite craftsmanship and well considered functionality. Whilst her expertise is in wood Kay has used everything from steel to flipflops in her work.

Collaboration and travel have brought new creative challenges. Sarah has close links with Zanzibar, Tanzania and continues to work with a company there producing furniture in coconut wood, a very sustainable and plentiful local resource. Since 2000 she has also worked in partnership with Andrea Stemmer designing interiors and furniture for the retail market.

Sarah takes pride in a meticulous attention to detail and strives to combine qualities that will make these pieces last more than one lifetime.


Born 1964, Hertfordshire

Education
1994-1996 Parnham College, Dorset
Full time studies in cabinet making and furniture design (BA equivalent)

Awards
2009 Bespoke Guild Mark for ‘Infinity’ tallboy awarded by The Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers
1999 Business Link marketing grant for export
1997 Guild mark No. 177 for ‘Panacea’ awarded by The Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers
1998 Crafts Council Setting Up Grant

Selected Exhibitions
2009 ‘21st Century Furniture’, The Millinery Works, London
‘An Eye for the Detail’, Ruthin Craft Centre, Ruthin, Denbighshire.
2008 ‘Fecit’ Roderick Butler Antiques, Honiton, Devon.
2007 ‘Bespoke’ Flow Gallery, Notting Hill, London
‘Collect’, Victoria & Albert Museum, London with Flow Gallery
2006 ‘Bespoke’, Flow Gallery, London.
2005 The Hub,  National Centre for Craft and Design Nottinghamshire      
Contemporary Applied Arts, London
New Members’ Focus Exhibition   
2003 Design Resolutions, Royal Festival Hall, London 
Contemporary Decorative Arts,Sothebys, London 
Poetry in Motion, Noel Hennessy Furniture, London
1999 Contemporary Decorative Arts, Sothebys, London   Form & Function, Crafts Council, London  
‘Best of Hackney’, Geffrye Museum, London 
A Celebration of Craftsmanship, Cheltenham   Royal Beatrice Art and Craft Gallery, Southampton
1998 International Contemporary Furniture Fair, New York
 - with British European Design Group   A Celebration of Craftsmanship, Cheltenham  International Design, Drenthe, Holland 
100% Design, London (New Designers Stand)

Collection & Major Commissions
2002 Commissioned to design private screening room for Everyman Cinema, Hampstead
2000 Crafts Council of Great Britain Collection - ‘Helga’ chair and prototype,
Commissioned to design exclusive bespoke range for Cowley Manor Hotel
1998 Commissioned to design and make a cardboard chair  for the feature film ‘The Borrowers’

 

Exhibitions

Archive

2009

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