About

The name Khaya carries multiple meanings across African languages and material histories. It recalls African mahogany (khaya ivorensis), a hardwood native to West and Central Africa valued for its depth of color, fine grain, and durability. It is also rooted in the Nguni word for “home,” while in Hausa, kaya refers to one’s load, belongings, or what is carried.

Together, these meanings shape the foundation of the studio: home, memory, material, and the weight of what we carry through our lives.

Founded by Nigerian artist Anne Adams, Khaya draws from West African terracotta traditions, earthen architecture, domestic rituals, and histories held within everyday objects. Each piece begins by hand in clay - pinched, coiled, and carved from original forms developed in the studio.

Drawing from her background as a contemporary artist, Anne Adams approaches each object as both functional form and record of use. Khaya emerged from an interest in the lives objects absorb over time. They sit beside grief, celebration, solitude, conversation, and rest. They are touched daily, carried across homes, kept close, broken, repaired, and passed on.

The collection draws from African photographic archives, carved forms, vessels, compounds, and long-standing traditions of making carried across generations of women on the continent.

Every object is made slowly, with close attention to weight, balance, texture, and surface.

Khaya is rooted in what we keep, what we carry, and the spaces that shape us. Objects for living. Objects for remembering.