The Landing (2012) from The Picker House by Bridget Smith. Commissioned by Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery
The Living Room (2012) from The Picker House by Bridget Smith. Commissioned by Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery
The Master Bedroom I (2012) from The Picker House by Bridget Smith. Commissioned by Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery
The Master Bedroom II (2012) from The Picker House by Bridget Smith. Commissioned by Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery
The Guest Bedroom (2012) from The Picker House by Bridget Smith. Commissioned by Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery
The Dressing Room (2012) from The Picker House by Bridget Smith. Commissioned by Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery
Stanley Picker Trust
Stanley Picker & The Picker House
Born in New York in 1913, Stanley Picker arrived in England after completing his studies at Harvard University, to take over his father’s cosmetics business. The beauty brands developed by the company – among them Gala, Miners, Mary Quant and Outdoor Girl – each epitomised their era and created a wealth that permitted Stanley Picker to indulge his greatest love, the arts.
The Picker House is an impeccable late-modernist house in Kingston upon Thames, designed for Picker in 1965 by architect Kenneth Wood, with interiors by Conran Partners, for the burgeoning arts philanthropist to live amongst his growing collection of art and design objects.
When he retired in 1976 Stanley devoted more time to his interest in art. He commissioned Wood to create a gallery in his garden that he dedicated to the more important items of his growing collection. In 1977 he established the Stanley Picker Trust to support the education and careers of young arts practitioners.
Stanley died in 1982 leaving in the Stanley Picker Trust, the Picker House and its collection, an enduring legacy that ensures his passion for the arts lives on to this day.
Visiting The Picker House
The Picker House is privately owned and run by the Stanley Picker Trust and is open for a limited number of pre-arranged group visits between April and October each year.
For all general enquires please visit www.stanleypickertrust.org for further details and tour bookings.
For internal Kingston University enquiries only please contact us at stanleypickergallery@kingston.ac.uk
Kenneth Wood: ‘A Modernist in Suburbia’
The Picker House and Collection: A Late 1960s Home for Modern Art and Design
A fully illustrated book The Picker House and Collection: A Late 1960s Home for Modern Art and Design – with essays by Jonathan Black, David Falkner, Fiona Fisher, Fran Lloyd, Rebecca Preston and Penny Sparke – was published by Philip Wilson Publishers in 2012, marking thirty years since the death of Stanley Picker in 1982, and is available for sale in our Shop. Architect Kenneth Wood is also the subject of an extensive research project on his wider practice, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
Stanley Picker Fellowships & The Picker House
Supported by the Stanley Picker Trust, the annual Stanley Picker Fellowships in Art & Design support contemporary practitioners to create and premiere an innovative body of new work at the Stanley Picker Gallery at Kingston University. Stanley Picker Fellows Elizabeth Price and Ab Rogers Design have both taken the Picker House and its collections as a direct inspiration for their respective Fellowship commissions. See an excerpt from Price’s Fellowship commission At The House of Mr X (2007) below.
Elizabeth Price ‘At The House of Mr X’ (2007) extract