The Jewelry of Your Home

designer katy skelton acuff lights up the room

This page: A Linear Light.

At right: Hollis Pendant Lights, Barnard Sconces (back wall) and Amalie Counterstools .

“Lighting is the thing that makes a design come together,” says Savannah-based designer Katy Skelton Acuff. “You have to have light in your house, and you want something to define your space and make your home warm.”

Katy’s career in home furnishings started in furniture and has wound its way through several media before her focus settled on lighting. Katy describes her style as being classic without being traditional. Her designs are clean, distinctive, and very beautiful, embodying her belief that lighting is, as she calls it, the jewelry of the home.

“I like things that are timeless and elegant, elevated but not stuffy,” she says. “I just like really simple things without a lot of extra adornment.”

Katy achieves this by using a limited palette of materials, colors, and textures to create lighting that enhances a space, not dominate it. Brass is the primary material she uses in her designs, combining it with leather, wood, ceramic, and aluminum elements to create contrast in some pieces and harmonies in others. Always keeping an eye out for new materials she can use in unique ways, she’ll soon be introducing alabaster elements as well to her lighting lines, playing with the unique translucence of the stone. “It will be beautiful,” she says.

Katy’s first foray into the world of furniture came while working at the headquarters of Four Hands in Austin, TX. After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, an early interest in architecture and design evolved into a passion for furniture. Even though she didn’t have prior experience in the field, she found herself entrusted with designing product lines for Four Hands and working on sourcing and manufacturing for the company as well.

In 2009, after two years at Four Hands, Katy left the company to pursue an MFA in Furniture Design at the Savannah College of Art & Design. Upon graduation in 2011, Katy and her husband, Drew, moved to Brooklyn, where she worked on expanding the design lines she had developed while at SCAD, and building her furniture and lighting in the two-bedroom apartment they lived in. Her early designs were influenced by her interest in mixing materials, such as wood and metal, as well as the simple fact of who she could find to build her products.

As a young designer just starting out, she found it challenging to find a manufacturer who was willing to invest time developing the product with her without the guarantee of volume production. The result was that she started working with small, family-owned businesses like wood furniture maker Keystone Collections in Myerstown, PA, who were willing to build product to order.

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Above: A Wallis Sconce and a Crawford End Table. Left: A Warren Sconce and an Amalie Ottoman. Far Left: Anderson Sconces.

“My design aesthetic is a little bit softer so wood speaks to that more,” she says. “But it was also a matter of finding a factory that would work with me.”

“So that’s why I focused on wood at the beginning and then started introducing more metal pieces into the line,” Katy says, which is when she came across Charleston Forge. While she continues to use these types of companies to manufacture her furniture (although Keystone closed its doors in 2021) all her lighting is made by hand in their Savannah facility.

The days of working out of a Brooklyn apartment are long gone. “We did need more space,” she says.

“The biggest challenge we still face is we move into a new facility and quickly grow out of it.”

As well as she and her husband Drew working for the company, they now have five full time employees.

About 80% of their business is from architects, interior designers, and several developers for whom they are the primary lighting source. The rest of her business is direct to consumer through her website. You can see more of Katy’s work at www.katyskelton.com, where you can also find information regarding how to open a trade account.

Above: A Perry Sconce, One Drink Table, Camp Bench, and a Lone Star Sconce