Stave began with a kitchen Shyamoli designed for her own family home in North London.

The palette grew out of the home rather than from a moodboard. A large painting in the living room, by Paresh Maity, set the deeper register: rust red, ochre, gold. The kitchen was built around a softer version of the same palette, with plaster pinks, warm greens, terracotta tile, and oak. The materials were timber, marble, zellige, bronze and aged brass.

Shyamoli’s two energetic young children and a lifestyle that included frequent lively dinners for extended family and friends, set the scene for the design. The kitchen needed to feel warm, abundant and sociable, whilst working intuitively, and be built strongly enough to withstand the demands of everyday life. The project became the model for how the studio works now: paying close attention to how a household moves through its day, building around that, and making everything with care, by hand.

The shaker cabinetry for that first kitchen came from another workshop. Marcin and his team installed it, adapted it, painted it, and made the pieces around it — the window seat with built-in storage, the hand painted front door and all the joinery that holds the room together. They’d already been working together for several years; the kitchens Stave now make grew out of that working relationship.

Every Stave kitchen will be designed in our North London studio and made from scratch in our workshop.