About Us

KathKath studio designs and produces unusual and trendsetting designs for interiors and products. The studios main areas of expertise are surface pattern design for digitally printed products and handprinted textiles using flocks, foils and colour changing inks. They design for industry and produce short product runs for bespoke projects and exhibitions.

KathKath brings together 15 years experience in the textiles and graphic industry. Kathy and Kathryn have worked and exhibited around the world and after bonding over a love of surface, pattern, colour and design, have pooled their respective talents to create the studio.

Kathy Schicker Bio

Kathy Schicker is a textile artist who designs and creates printed and woven work for exhibitions, education and industry.

She is a trained Jacquard weaver and printer specialising in innovative and light-reactive textiles for interiors. Her work is driven by a fascination with light, new materials and the fusion of craft and new technology. The work she produces is research-led and is largely bespoke or collaborative.

Kathy has MA in Design for Textile Futures from Central St Martins, and BA in Visual Arts Textiles from Goldsmiths College. Kathy’s fascination with light has produced two main research projects: Woven Light, her colour-changing textile collection, and Photonic crystal fibre prototypes, in collaboration with the Physics department of the Polytechnique de Montréal, Canada. She is now working on new collections with KathKath Studios, her new collaboration with graphic designer Kathryn Pledger.

Kathy regularly exhibits her work internationally and samples are held in several materials libraries around the world. She has shown in the UK, USA, Italy, Canada, Russia, Belgium, Poland, France and Uruguay. This includes solo exhibitions, ICFF in New York, Milan Furniture Fair, London Design Week, FuturoTextiel08 and 12^th International Triennial of Tapestry in Lodz. She has also been artist in residence with GlaxoSmithKline.

She is a founder member of the dynamic Puff & Flock textile collective and has worked in collaboration with companies such as Ercol and Toray, for which they won the University of London Creative Enterprise Awards for collaboration in 2011.

Kathy lives and works in London, UK.

Kathryn Pledger Bio

Kathryn Pledger is a trained graphic designer who creates digital and online artwork for industry, local government, international standards bodies and bespoke freelance commissions.

She has a BA (Hons) in Visual Communication from the University of South Australia. Kathryn has worked on many leading international household brands, designing identities, point of sale displays, exhibitions, print collateral and online resources.  She has also worked with industry leading blue chip companies on their corporate responsibility reports and materials.

Born and raised in rural Australia, her career has taken her from Sydney to Ireland and the UK where she’s recently been able to focus her love of colour and texture into surface pattern design. Her work is strongly influenced by her years of travelling and her love of hand drawn elements, typography and photography.

Kathryn runs her own successful freelance graphic design business, which has enabled her to move closer to her true passion of surface design.

She is currently working on new collections for KathKath Studios, her new collaboration with textile artist Kathy Schicker.

Kathryn has a number of her surface pattern designs licensed with companies including Artscase, Keka and KESSinhouse. She will also have designs published in the upcoming PatternBase book.

Kathryn Lives and works in London, UK.