→ The Story of Stephen Kenn

The Story of Stephen Kenn

Most people know Stephen Kenn as a furniture company. That's certainly where we've spent most of our time over the past fifteen years. But furniture has never been the whole story.

Since founding the studio in Los Angeles in 2011, we've approached every project with the same question: What can we make that doesn't already exist? Sometimes the answer becomes a sofa or lounge chair. Sometimes it's a leather bag, a lighting fixture, a piece of artwork, or an entirely custom design created for a particular space. The medium changes, but the process remains much the same. We begin with curiosity, follow the ideas wherever they lead, and make them by hand with a small community of skilled craftspeople here in Los Angeles.

We've never been particularly interested in adding another version of something that's already been made. Designing original furniture takes longer. It requires more prototyping, more experimentation, and a willingness to spend months refining details that most people will never notice. It's also the reason this studio exists. The challenge of creating something new continues to be the part of the work we enjoy most.

Our collections are designed to be lived with for many years, and because every piece is made to order, they can be customized to suit the people and spaces they become part of. Dimensions, upholstery, finishes, leather, hardware, and other details can all be tailored to each project. We see customization as an extension of the design process, allowing every piece to feel at home while remaining true to the original idea behind it.

Materials have always played an equally important role in our work. From the beginning, we were drawn to materials that already carried a story. Vintage military tent canvas became one of the defining materials of our early collections, its weathered texture and years of use bringing a sense of history that couldn't be manufactured. Over time, that curiosity expanded to include Japanese boro textiles, vintage Moroccan and Eastern rugs, naturally aged vegetable-tanned leather, reclaimed materials, and carefully developed new materials of our own. Whether old or new, we're interested in materials that reveal something about where they've been and continue to become more beautiful through use.

Everything we create is designed in our Los Angeles studio and manufactured locally. Some pieces are built in-house, while others move through the workshops of longtime manufacturing partners across the city. Many of these businesses are family owned, many have been built by immigrant craftspeople, and together they've become an essential part of how we work. Designing and making locally allows us to remain closely involved in every stage of the process, refining details alongside the people who bring each design to life.

Today, the studio continues to evolve. Alongside our furniture collections, we create artwork, objects, custom commissions, and occasional collaborations with architects, interior designers, and hospitality clients. While each project takes a different form, they're all connected by the same belief: thoughtful design begins with curiosity, grows through craftsmanship, and is shaped by the people who make it.

The pages that follow tell the story of how that philosophy has developed over the years, the collections that have emerged along the way, and the community that continues to shape everything we create.

Before the Beginning

Before there was a studio, there was simply a fascination with making things.

Stephen's background was in fashion, designing jeans and leather bags for established brands. It was a career that taught him about materials, construction, manufacturing, and the countless decisions that shape a well-made object. Just as importantly, it taught him how ideas move from a sketchbook into production, and how much can change along the way.

Working with larger companies also meant working within larger structures. Designs passed through layers of approvals, production realities, and business decisions before they reached the finished product. It was a valuable education, but over time Stephen found himself wanting something different. He wanted the freedom to follow an idea from beginning to end, to spend more time experimenting, prototyping, and refining without compromise. More than anything, he wanted to build original designs that reflected his own point of view.

When Stephen and Beks founded the studio together in 2011, they weren't setting out to become a large furniture company. They were creating a place where ideas could be explored thoughtfully and where every decision, from the first sketch to the final stitch, could remain close to the people making it.

Like most small businesses, the early years required a willingness to do a little bit of everything. Stephen focused on designing new collections, building prototypes, meeting with fabricators, and solving the countless technical challenges that come with creating original furniture. At the same time, Beks continued working full-time in healthcare while spending evenings and weekends building the business alongside him. She photographed new pieces, built the website, answered customer emails, managed bookkeeping, coordinated production, packed orders, and gradually developed the systems that allowed the studio to grow.

Looking back, it's difficult to separate the story of the company from the story of their partnership. Every collection reflects thousands of conversations around the studio, around the dinner table, and during long drives across Los Angeles between fabricators, upholsterers, and suppliers. Stephen naturally gravitates toward design and making. Beks finds equal satisfaction in creating structure around those ideas, helping them reach clients while ensuring the studio remains personal, thoughtful, and sustainable.

That balance continues to shape the studio today. New collections still begin with sketches, prototypes, and questions. They still evolve through conversation, revision, and collaboration. The tools have changed, the projects have grown, and the studio has expanded, but the way they work together remains remarkably similar to those early days.

In many ways, the company has never really outgrown its beginnings. It is still a small, family-owned design studio built around original ideas, thoughtful craftsmanship, and the belief that the best work comes from staying closely connected to the people who make it.

Building in Los Angeles

From the beginning, we made the decision to design and manufacture everything in Los Angeles.

It wasn't simply about keeping production close to home. It was about staying close to the work itself.

Designing original furniture is an ongoing conversation between an idea and the people who know how to build it. A sketch becomes a prototype. A prototype reveals something unexpected. A detail is adjusted. A material changes. A connection becomes stronger. That process is difficult to do from thousands of miles away. We wanted to be able to stand beside the people making our work, solve problems together, and continue refining each piece until it felt resolved.

Over the years, we've built relationships with a remarkable community of local craftspeople and fabricators throughout Los Angeles. Some specialize in steel fabrication, others in upholstery, leatherwork, woodworking, machining, or finishing. Many of these businesses are family owned. Many have been built by immigrant families whose knowledge has been developed over decades of making. Their experience has become an essential part of our own.

Our studio often feels less like a single workshop and more like a network connected by shared ideas. A typical week might have us moving between our own studio and several fabrication shops across the city, reviewing prototypes, discussing construction details, testing finishes, or solving an engineering challenge together. Those conversations happen face-to-face, often with a sketch in one hand and a partially completed piece in the other. It's a collaborative way of working that has shaped every collection we've created.

Designing and manufacturing locally also allows us to remain flexible. Because every piece is made to order, we regularly customize dimensions, materials, finishes, and upholstery for residential, hospitality, and commercial projects. Staying closely connected to the manufacturing process allows those customizations to happen thoughtfully, while preserving the integrity of the original design.

Over time, these relationships have grown into something much more meaningful than a list of suppliers. We've celebrated weddings and new babies together. We've watched children grow up around the workshops. We've shared meals, solved difficult production problems, and learned from one another through every collection we've developed. The furniture carries all of those relationships with it, even if they're invisible to everyone except the people who made it.

Manufacturing in Los Angeles isn't always the easiest path, and it certainly isn't the least expensive. But after more than fifteen years, we still can't imagine working any other way. The ability to collaborate closely with skilled craftspeople, continue learning from one another, and remain involved in every stage of the process is central to how we design. It's one of the reasons our work continues to evolve, and one of the reasons every piece that leaves the studio still feels personal.

The Inheritance Collection

The first collection we designed became the foundation for almost everything that followed.

It began with an old upholstered chair.

Curious to understand how it had been made, Stephen carefully took it apart piece by piece. As each layer came away, it became clear that the most interesting part of the chair wasn't the upholstery. It was the structure beneath it. The frame, the support system, the relationships between each material. It raised a simple question: why hide the part that makes the furniture work?

That question became the starting point for the Inheritance Collection.

Rather than concealing the construction, the collection celebrates it. A welded steel frame remains fully visible, while a system of military-inspired webbing, leather straps, and solid metal buckles supports the cushions above. Every element serves a purpose, and every purpose becomes part of the design. The result is furniture that feels honest about how it's made, inviting people to appreciate not only the finished piece, but the thinking behind it.

The Inheritance Collection also established something that has remained central to our work ever since: a deep curiosity about materials.

From the beginning, many of the early pieces were upholstered in vintage military tent canvas sourced from decommissioned army tents. Years of exposure to the elements had given the canvas a texture, softness, and character that simply couldn't be recreated. Every panel carried subtle differences in color, repairs, fading, and wear, making each piece quietly one of a kind.

Over time, that same curiosity has led us to work with Japanese boro textiles, vintage Moroccan and Eastern rugs, reclaimed materials, naturally aged vegetable-tanned leather, and newly developed textiles that offer their own depth and character. Some materials arrive with decades of history. Others begin completely new. What connects them isn't their age, but the way they continue to evolve over time.

We've never been interested in making something that simply looks old.

We design things to age well.

That philosophy extends far beyond the materials themselves. We want every piece to develop character through years of everyday use, becoming more personal with time rather than less.

The Inheritance Collection also introduced another idea that continues to define the studio today: customization.

Every piece is made to order in Los Angeles, allowing clients, architects, and interior designers to tailor dimensions, upholstery, finishes, leather, webbing, and hardware to suit a particular home or project. We enjoy seeing how different material combinations can completely change the personality of the same design while remaining true to its original concept.

Looking back, the Inheritance Collection feels less like the beginning of a furniture collection and more like the beginning of a design philosophy. It introduced many of the ideas that continue to guide our work today: honest construction, thoughtful restraint, original design, material curiosity, local manufacturing, and furniture that reveals how it is made rather than hiding it.

Fifteen years later, we still return to those ideas. Not because we're interested in repeating the same designs, but because they continue to lead us toward new ones.

The Encounter Collection

After introducing the Inheritance Collection, our attention shifted from furniture to something much smaller, but no less meaningful.

The Encounter Collection began with a leather camera case that had belonged to Stephen's grandfather.

Like many objects that stay with us for years, it had become more beautiful through use. The leather had softened. The edges had rounded. Small scratches and marks recorded decades of travel and everyday life. It wasn't remarkable because it had remained perfect. It was remarkable because it had changed.

That observation became the beginning of a different kind of design question.

Rather than asking how an object was constructed, we began wondering how materials evolve over time, and why some objects become more meaningful the longer we live with them.

The Encounter Collection became our way of exploring those ideas.

Each bag is made from full-grain, vegetable-tanned leather that is carefully hand-finished before beginning a life of its own. Unlike heavily treated leathers designed to remain unchanged, vegetable-tanned leather continues to respond to the person who carries it. Sunlight, weather, travel, and daily use gradually create a patina that can never be repeated.

In many ways, the collection reinforced something we'd already begun discovering through the Inheritance Collection.

We're less interested in preserving perfection than we are in creating objects that become more personal with time.

Whether we're working with vintage military tent canvas, reclaimed textiles, naturally aged leather, Japanese boro, or handcrafted steel, we're always asking the same question:

How will this material look ten years from now?

The answer matters far more to us than how it looks on the day it leaves the studio.

Like everything we create, the Encounter Collection was designed and manufactured in Los Angeles in collaboration with our local community of skilled craftspeople. Although it expanded our work beyond furniture, it never felt like a departure from the studio. It simply explored the same ideas through a different medium.

One of the most meaningful parts of the project became the short film created to accompany the collection. Written by our friend James Watson and brought to life by the talented team at Process Creative, it explored ideas of legacy, craftsmanship, and the encounters that shape our lives. More than a film about leather bags, it became a reflection on why we make things at all. Years later, it's still one of the projects people write to us about.

Looking back, the Encounter Collection broadened our understanding of what the studio could become. It reminded us that furniture, bags, artwork, and objects are all simply different ways of exploring the same questions. The medium changes. The curiosity remains the same.

The Outdoor Collection

As the Inheritance Collection found its way into more homes, we began hearing the same question from clients, architects, and interior designers.

"Could you make this for outdoors?"

It was a question we wanted to answer, but we weren't interested in creating an outdoor collection simply for the sake of expanding our catalog.

The suspended seating system at the heart of the Inheritance Collection depends on flexibility, tension, and comfort. Existing outdoor materials could survive the weather, but they couldn't recreate the experience we were looking for. Rather than adapting what already existed, we decided to develop something entirely new.

That question stayed with us for several years.

The result became the Outdoor Collection.

While it shares a visual relationship with the Inheritance Collection, nearly every detail was reconsidered. The steel frames were engineered specifically for outdoor environments, then zinc primed and powder coated for long-term durability. Cushions were developed using outdoor performance materials, while the support system beneath them became an entirely new project of its own.

After years of development and testing, we created a proprietary stretch webbing designed specifically for the collection. The webbing combines UV resistance, strength, and flexibility while maintaining the clean, architectural appearance that has become part of the studio's design language. Attached to the frame with custom metal clips, it creates a suspended seating surface that gently supports the cushions above, resulting in an outdoor seating experience that's unexpectedly soft, responsive, and comfortable.

Like all of our furniture, the Outdoor Collection is made to order in Los Angeles and built around flexibility. Individual pieces can stand alone or be combined into larger modular configurations, allowing the collection to adapt to private residences, hospitality spaces, rooftop terraces, gardens, and commercial projects. Clients can choose from a wide selection of outdoor fabrics, finishes, and layouts while maintaining the integrity of the original design.

Looking back, the Outdoor Collection wasn't simply about bringing one of our designs outside. It became another reminder that the best ideas often take longer than expected. Sometimes the right material doesn't exist yet. Sometimes the solution requires years of testing before it feels complete.

We've learned to be comfortable with that.

Not every idea needs to become a collection immediately. We'd rather wait until something feels fully resolved than rush a design before it's ready. That patience has become an important part of how we work, and it continues to shape every new collection that follows.

Following Curiosity

Over the years, we've realized something about the way we work.

We don't begin with product categories or collection plans. We begin with questions.

Sometimes those questions come from a material we'd like to understand better. Sometimes they're inspired by an object we've lived with for years. Sometimes they begin with a construction method or a simple observation that stays in the back of our minds until we're ready to explore it.

That process has led us in directions we never could have planned.

Some ideas become individual pieces, like the Reflection Table, where a reclaimed wood beam supports an organically shaped mirrored surface that seems to float above it. Others become studies in movement, like the Spinning Plates Table, whose independently adjustable surfaces reflect the way our attention shifts between the objects we value most.

The Compression Collection grew from another question entirely. We became interested in whether compression itself could become the structure. Instead of relying on traditional fasteners, the collection uses carefully machined components held together through pressure alone. The resulting pieces feel quiet and architectural, while revealing another way materials can work together.

None of these projects were created because we felt we needed another table or another collection. They exist because they taught us something.

Over time we've come to realize that's how the studio has always operated. Every collection leaves us with a new question, and that question often becomes the beginning of the next one.

Furniture simply happens to be the medium those ideas most often become.

Art as Exploration

Alongside our furniture collections, Stephen's art practice has continued to grow.

While furniture asks practical questions about comfort, proportion, and function, artwork offers the freedom to explore ideas without those same constraints. It becomes a place to experiment with materials, composition, and process simply because they're interesting enough to spend time with.

Working with leather, wood, steel, stone, canvas, paint, and found materials, the artwork explores many of the same ideas that appear throughout the furniture. Structure. Balance. Texture. Time. Materials that reveal their history rather than conceal it.

The relationship works both ways. Sometimes an idea first explored through artwork finds its way into a future furniture collection. Other times, something discovered while developing a chair or table opens the door to an entirely different body of work.

We don't think of these as separate practices.

They're all part of the same conversation.

Whether the finished piece hangs on a wall, sits in a home, or becomes part of a larger architectural space, the goal remains the same: to create original work that feels thoughtful, lasting, and deeply connected to the process of making.

Designing Beyond Our Collections

While our collections remain at the heart of the studio, every so often we have the opportunity to begin with a completely blank page.

We occasionally collaborate with architects, interior designers, and clients on custom commissions where the goal isn't to adapt one of our existing designs, but to create something entirely new for a particular space. These projects allow us to explore ideas that wouldn't naturally fit within one of our collections while responding to the architecture, landscape, and character of a place.

One recent example was a large commission for a winery in Napa Valley. Working closely with the project team, we designed custom banquette seating for the restaurant, a large-scale light fixture, shelving throughout the property, and an outdoor dining chair developed specifically for the winery. Every piece was designed for that space alone while remaining true to the ideas that guide all of our work.

We take on projects like these selectively. They require the same curiosity, collaboration, and time that go into every collection we release, and we enjoy them most when there's an opportunity to create something genuinely original alongside a team that shares those values.

Whether we're designing a chair for one of our collections or an entirely new environment for a client, the process is remarkably similar. It begins with a question, evolves through sketches, prototypes, conversations with our manufacturing partners here in Los Angeles, and countless small refinements before it finally becomes something we'd want to live with ourselves.

The Companion Collection

Some collections begin with a design question.

Others begin with someone you love.

The Companion Collection was inspired by Obi, our sheepadoodle and constant companion around the studio. Like so many dogs, he quickly became part of the daily rhythm of our lives. He greeted visitors, wandered between prototypes, napped through design meetings, and somehow always found the sunniest spot in the studio.

When Obi was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder, we experienced firsthand both the emotional and financial challenges that can come with caring for a beloved animal. It was a difficult season for our family, but it also became the beginning of an idea.

Released in 2025, the Companion Collection brought many of the materials and construction methods we'd been working with for years into a new context. Collars, leashes, and accessories are made in Los Angeles using locally woven nylon webbing, full-grain leather, and solid brass hardware. Like our furniture, every detail was designed to be used every day and to become more beautiful with time.

We've always believed that the objects we live with should improve through use rather than wear out because of it. The Companion Collection follows the same philosophy. Leather softens. Brass develops a natural patina. Small marks become reminders of long walks, familiar places, and years spent together.

We don't design things to look old.

We design them to age well.

That idea feels just as relevant for something held in your hand every day as it does for a piece of furniture in your home.

The collection also gave us an opportunity to support a cause that had become deeply personal. A portion of the proceeds is donated to The Pet Fund, helping families offset the cost of treating pets with serious medical conditions. It's a small way of giving back to a community that supported us when we needed it most.

Looking back, the Companion Collection reminded us that good design isn't defined by scale. Whether we're making a sofa, a dining chair, or a dog's collar, we're still asking many of the same questions about materials, longevity, craftsmanship, and the relationships people build with the objects they use every day.

A Family Studio

When we founded the studio in 2011, we couldn't have imagined what it would look like fifteen years later.

In the beginning, it was simply the two of us. We designed collections, packed orders, answered customer emails, drove across Los Angeles meeting with fabricators, and gradually built the business one project at a time. The studio grew alongside us, shaped by every collection, every challenge, and every relationship we built along the way.

As our lives changed, so did the studio.

When our son Ellis was born in 2023, work and family became even more intertwined. Like many family businesses, the line between the two has never been particularly clear, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Some days you'll find him building towers from upholstery foam, pushing toy trucks between prototypes, collecting hardware that somehow finds its way into his pockets, or quietly drawing while conversations about new collections happen around him.

Watching the world through a child's eyes has been an unexpected source of inspiration.

Children have a remarkable way of approaching everything with curiosity. They pick things up simply to understand them. They stack, arrange, take apart, rebuild, and ask questions that adults often stop asking. Spending time with Ellis has reminded us that exploration doesn't always need a purpose. Sometimes it's enough simply to see what happens.

That perspective eventually found its way into one of our smallest pieces.

The Kids Chair was designed specifically for children, not as a miniature version of an existing collection, but as an original piece that reflects the same values we bring to everything we make. It's handcrafted in Los Angeles, upholstered in thoughtfully selected materials including vintage military tent canvas and other textiles with history, and designed to become part of everyday family life for years to come.

Becoming parents hasn't changed the way we think about design so much as the way we think about the homes our work becomes part of. We find ourselves thinking more about how furniture lives through different seasons of life, quietly witnessing birthdays, conversations, celebrations, and ordinary moments that become meaningful over time.

Looking around the studio today, we sometimes see echoes of where this story began.

Years ago, Stephen took apart an old chair because he wanted to understand how it had been made.

Now there's a little boy wandering through the same studio, asking his own questions about the things being built around him.

Whether Ellis grows up to become a designer or chooses an entirely different path doesn't really matter.

What matters is that he's growing up in a place where curiosity, craftsmanship, and making things with your hands are simply part of everyday life.

The Ease Collection

By the time we began designing the Ease Collection, we'd spent more than a decade thinking about structure.

The Inheritance Collection explored exposed construction. The Outdoor Collection reimagined suspended seating. Every collection had taught us something about materials, support, and the relationship between comfort and form.

Eventually, another question began to emerge.

What happens when you remove as much as possible?

Not to make something minimal for its own sake, but to discover how quiet a piece could become while still feeling generous, comfortable, and inviting.

That question stayed with us for nearly three years.

The Ease Collection became the answer.

Where many of our earlier pieces celebrate visible construction and layered materials, the Ease Collection is intentionally understated. Soft, rounded forms replace exposed structure. Details become quieter. The engineering remains just as considered, but much of it disappears beneath the surface, allowing comfort to become the defining experience.

It was also an opportunity to simplify the design process for our clients.

Like all of our furniture, every piece is made to order in Los Angeles and upholstered to suit each home or project. Rather than offering countless structural variations, the collection is built around three modular elements - the Chair, End Chair, and Corner Chair. Together they create seating arrangements that can grow from a single lounge chair to larger sofas and sectionals while allowing the upholstery fabric to become the primary expression of each piece.

In many ways, the Ease Collection reflects how our own perspective has evolved.

When we first began designing furniture, we were fascinated by exposing every detail of construction. Today we're just as interested in what can be left unsaid. Sometimes restraint communicates just as much as complexity. Sometimes removing a detail makes the ones that remain even more meaningful.

That doesn't mean we've moved away from the ideas that shaped the studio.

The same attention to craftsmanship, original design, local manufacturing, and material selection remains at the heart of every piece we make. The questions are simply different now than they were fifteen years ago.

Looking back, we don't see the Ease Collection as a departure from the Inheritance Collection.

We see it as part of the same conversation.

One explores how structure can become visible.

The other explores what happens when that structure becomes almost invisible.

Both begin in exactly the same place:

With curiosity.

A Brand Rooted in Humanity

Looking back over the past fifteen years, we're grateful that the studio has remained remarkably true to the way it began.

We still design every collection ourselves. We still spend our weeks sketching ideas, building prototypes, and refining details that may only ever be noticed by the people who make them. We still drive across Los Angeles to meet with our manufacturing partners, solve problems together, and watch new ideas gradually take shape.

As the studio has grown, so has the community around it.

Many of the people who helped build our earliest collections are still part of our story today. The relationships we've built with local fabricators, upholsterers, leatherworkers, finishers, and craftspeople have become just as important as the furniture itself. Together we've spent years learning from one another, celebrating milestones, overcoming challenges, and continuing to make work we're proud to put our names on.

Remaining a small, independent studio has allowed us to protect something that's become increasingly important to us: the freedom to follow our curiosity.

We don't begin by asking what the market needs next or how many new collections we should release each year. We begin with ideas that genuinely interest us. Sometimes those ideas become furniture. Sometimes they become artwork, lighting, leather goods, or a custom commission for a particular space. Not every idea becomes a finished piece, and we're comfortable with that. The process of exploring them is often just as valuable.

We've also come to appreciate that good design is rarely the work of one person. Every collection reflects the experience, skill, and care of a much larger community. From the first sketch to the final piece leaving the studio, countless hands contribute to the finished work. That collaboration has always been one of the most rewarding parts of what we do.

People sometimes ask us what defines the Stephen Kenn aesthetic.

We don't think of it as a particular material, collection, or visual style.

We hope it's something quieter than that.

A commitment to original design.

An appreciation for honest materials.

Respect for the people who make our work.

A belief that furniture should be lived with for decades, not seasons.

And a willingness to keep asking questions, even after fifteen years.

An Ongoing Story

When we founded the studio in 2011, we had no idea where it would lead.

If there's one thing we've learned since then, it's that the most rewarding ideas are often the ones we never planned.

An old chair became the Inheritance Collection.

A camera case became the Encounter Collection.

A question from our clients became the Outdoor Collection.

A dog became the Companion Collection.

A child changed the way we looked at creativity.

Each project has taught us something, and each has quietly shaped the ones that followed.

That continues today.

Our studio is still filled with sketches pinned to the walls, material samples spread across worktables, prototypes waiting to be refined, and ideas that may not become anything for months or even years. Some will eventually find their way into a new collection. Others will become artwork. A few may become custom projects created for a single home, hospitality space, or building.

We don't always know where those ideas will lead.

That's part of what keeps the work interesting.

The collections will continue to grow. New materials will find their way into the studio. We'll keep collaborating with architects, interior designers, collectors, and craftspeople. We'll continue creating original furniture, artwork, objects, and spaces that reflect the same values we've held since the beginning.

Not because we're trying to build a larger catalog.

Simply because we're still curious.

And as long as there are new questions to ask, there will always be something new to make.