founder and principal designer

Kelsey Orton

Fast forward to my college career at High Point University where I earned my CIDA accredited interior design degree, I spent all four years diving into the luxury design world by working with Century Furniture for four consecutive years, working with names such as Thomas O’Brien and Candice Olson. After graduation, I began working with other designers and companies, and quickly came to realize that the industry was lacking that personal attention to detail. Retailers were focused on pushing high volume at a lower quality, and designers would take on more clients than they had time for, causing details to slip, and timelines to suffer. 

In 2018, I launched Tennyson Studio in my husband Jared and mine's first home, an apartment on Tennyson Lane, with a dream of providing a more personal approach to design, where detail and quality were paramount to spaces. Taking on only a handful of clients each year, my clients have become friends, thus designs became more detailed and personal as I began learning more about them and honing in on their specific design needs. 

When I'm not designing, you can find me wandering the streets of Downtown Savannah, visiting coffee and antique shops, working in the garden (or the lack there of), and creating memories with my husband, Jared, daughter, Collins Grace, and dog, Daisy.

Growing up in a new build neighborhood, my dad and I would walk the neighborhood and walk on sites after the workers had gone home. Engineer by day, floor plan designer by night and weekend, he was my first teacher in the trade that I love. As a kid, I was fascinated by the arts. You would find me with glue and scissors in my hands, paint and clay under my fingernails, and scraps of fabric scattered around my room from hand-sewing bags I made from old jeans. So when I found out that I could blend my love for the arts and construction together, I was hooked.