Our mission
To create beautiful, artistic growth charts, in an earth-friendly way, that let families easily mark moments in time.
How it began
I'll never forget the day my daughter said, "Mummy, I picked you before I was born." How's that for something worth writing down?
Kids say and do the most amazing things, and every day with mine brought another moment like that one. I tried a scrapbook, because I loved photography. At the end of the first year I had two pages finished.
"A journal, then!" Surely I could write down everything that mattered. At the end of that year I had four entries. Not what you'd call a success.
All along, I'd been keeping the children's heights the old-fashioned way, on the kitchen door frame. Then we decided to renovate the old farmhouse, and the door frame had to go. I copied the marks onto paper and promised myself I'd find a growth chart that actually suited our home. What happened once it was on the wall was a small miracle. Not only did I catch every height mark when it mattered, I finally had a journal I could keep up with, because it hung right there in the kitchen.
Every time one of the kids did something memorable, I picked up a pen and wrote it on the chart.
The neighbours loved it so much they started asking for their own designs. At the time I was carving large wooden birds in my studio, and a metre-tall heron was leaning against the wall. Oliver, then two, stood next to it and was completely dwarfed. Evie looked at them both and said, "Oliver, you'll have to eat a lot of porridge if you want to be as tall as that bird."
That was the moment kin & notch was born. I'd been searching for an elegant growth chart I could hang in my kitchen, a piece of art that would keep its beauty long after the children had grown. Growth charts mark single moments in time and hold our memories. I wanted to make charts so good that, if the house were on fire, you'd grab one on the way out.
The years that followed were the hardest of my life, and the studio carried me through them. Making heirlooms for other people's children, and seeing how much love went into every order, filled my cup when nothing else could.
Today kin & notch is a family-run business built around the celebration of life, family and friends. We know how precious every moment is.
Our founder
Sarah Whitfield — Founder & CEO, Artist-in-Chief
lover of colour / mum to two / wooden bird carver
Our team
Jess — Shop Manager, Customer Service
mum to three boys / the best customer service person we know
Katie — Designer, Graphics Department
mum / designer / pastry lover
Tom — Wood Shop, Production
veteran / son / friend. Tom makes every single piece we sell, and that's a lot of pieces.
Biscuit — Chief Shop Dog
snack thief extraordinaire
Our core values
SIMPLE IS BETTER
Life flows when things are simple. We started kin & notch with one rule: everything is made in Europe. There's nothing more rewarding than watching a small business lift up a small town. And unlike a lot of factories far away, we don't pour anything into the river out back.
DO NO HARM
To people or to the planet. So we make things that last a lifetime. They won't spoil, fall apart into a hundred bits of plastic, or end up in landfill. Every chart is printed on maple plywood, one of the fastest-growing hardwoods and one of the most sustainable wood products there is. Our inks are solvent-free and UV-cured, a genuinely green technology.
CREATIVE DESIGN
Ever cleared out a wardrobe? Then you've found things you've outgrown, things that just don't fit any more. We design pieces that stay on the wall long after the children who used them have left home. Timeless. In many cases, real art prints by real working artists.
GIVE BACK
Our work should give more than a terrific product. That's why kin & notch donates 10% of profits to child-focused charities across Europe.