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Profile

Principal – Kawther Alsaffar

Kuwaiti product designer, Kawther Alsaffar attained her BFA. in Industrial Design from Rhode Island School of Design, and her MA. in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London. Her work is multi-disciplinary and uses storytelling and craft to traverse the fictional lines between art and design. She focuses on finding patterns for human intimacy and truth, whether this manifests itself in finding cultural significance, integrity in materials, or creating human connections.

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Studio Saffar

Definition of Saffar: The tinker, a person who mends pots and pans. Derivative of “Safar” good copper.

Founded in 2014, Studio Saffar is a product design studio based in Kuwait that designs and fabricates homewares rooted in local craftsmanship. It focuses on developing crafts in Kuwait that aren’t favourably considered in the rest of the world, challenging the generic definition of luxury and promoting the local grittiness. The brand works to contribute to the worldwide conversation on the differences and importance of experience based cultural design. Its products aspire to be personally informed, locally defined and universally desirable.

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Key Principles

Story Telling

Stories are potent in capturing human emotion. Saffar products gain significance from the stories of their design, their process of making, and where they are inherited in the world. They are an exposition of the vitality of story telling, human sentiment and often whimsy and nostalgia.

Local Partnership

Saffar is committed to collaboration with craftsmen and designers. By bridging the socioeconomic divide between the craftsmen and the designer, through continued recognition and appreciation for the process of making, Saffar elevates the integrity of its products, and the vitality of its craftsmanship.

Utilising Context

As a historic trade route that has developed into an oil rich nation Kuwait is a multinational hub with unique craft methods, material possibilities and vernacular. Saffar synthesises and capitalises on this potential to create products that are inherently Kuwaiti.