Karen Ryan



Karen Ryan graduated in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in 2001 with a keen sense of iconoclasm, she considers herself a design agitator whose job is to produce the unique from the mundane. She scavenges around Portsmouth to find the raw material for her furniture which she reinvents through colour and juxtopositions to create something bold and new.

'custom made'

i love chairs.

i hate gluttony.

i am a misfit and my custom made furniture is constructed using misfits of chairs and tables discarded or no longer valued.

i make a different sense out of what is a senseless waste.

i invent a reality that i wish to live in where the ugly and unwanted are valued.

my autobiography is inseparable from my creative practice.

fate dictates the form of my raw materials, assisted by my perpetual scavenging.

the construction technique is more of a construction ethos, purposely adopting a naive approach.

every custom made piece is unique.

every custom made piece contains traces of their past.

Karen Ryan
Karen Ryan
Karen Ryan
Karen Ryan
Karen Ryan

Karen Ryan



Karen Ryan graduated in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in 2001 with a keen sense of iconoclasm, she considers herself a design agitator whose job is to produce the unique from the mundane. She scavenges around Portsmouth to find the raw material for her furniture which she reinvents through colour and juxtopositions to create something bold and new.

'custom made'

i love chairs.

i hate gluttony.

i am a misfit and my custom made furniture is constructed using misfits of chairs and tables discarded or no longer valued.

i make a different sense out of what is a senseless waste.

i invent a reality that i wish to live in where the ugly and unwanted are valued.

my autobiography is inseparable from my creative practice.

fate dictates the form of my raw materials, assisted by my perpetual scavenging.

the construction technique is more of a construction ethos, purposely adopting a naive approach.

every custom made piece is unique.

every custom made piece contains traces of their past.

Karen Ryan
Karen Ryan
Karen Ryan
Karen Ryan
Karen Ryan