Water pitchers and serving spoons aren’t generally the most whimsical objects, but in the hands of South African sculptor Carrol Boyes, who has just opened her first American retail store in SoHo, utilitarian houseware items take on a playful life of their own. Her spun-aluminum pitcher features a sinuous hand-crafted pewter human figure, its stretched-out arms creating the handle ($160); her stainless-steel serving spoons boast pewter handles fashioned into lithe female forms ($58).

“I wanted to bring things of beauty into the home,” Ms. Boyes said from her office in Cape Town, South Africa. “But I didn’t want the pieces to take themselves too seriously; they needed to have a quirky, playful element.”

Her two-story Prince Street shop, which opened its doors three weeks ago, brims with well-crafted items featuring a tongue-in-cheek sensibility. A dining room table, set for eight, is lavishly adorned with Ms. Boyes’s creations, from stainless-steel and pewter cutlery featuring curvy abstract designs ($37 a piece) to spunaluminum vases ($289) and graceful pewter candlesticks, a sculpted human figure holding the candles aloft ($238). The store’s walls are lined with a dizzying array of items, such as picture frames ($43-$79), decorative bowls and trays ($189-$376), leather and metal magazine racks ($276), shelves of cutlery and serving utensils, desk clocks ($93), and door pulls ($525 for a set of two). Scattered among Ms. Boyes’s own designs are other imports from her native country, most notably dolls made of colorful glass beadwork ($130-$312). Upstairs there are larger pieces, such as coffee tables with tapering pewter legs and tops made of rich panga panga, a wood native to Africa ($1,665), as well as cast-aluminum table lamps ($261) and glass and metal trolley carts with pairs of stretched human figures providing the carts’ frames ($1,890).

Much of Ms. Boyes’s work draws inspiration from the human body. “It doesn’t matter if it’s short or fat or thin or tall,” she said, “I find it amazing. I like extending and pushing the form, figuring out a way to make it work as a functional type of art.”

Ms. Boyes, 50, wasn’t always interested in designing objects for practical use. She received an undergraduate degree in art, focusing on sculpture, and after graduating, taught English and art for the next 11 years, all the while making her own creations on the side. In 1989, at the age of 36, she decided it was time to take stock. “I reached that point in my life when I needed to see if I could make a life for myself, an actual living, from my creations,” she said. But, realizing that making sculpture would be “a tough sell,” Ms. Boyes, who had been designing artwork that resembled functional objects, such as sculptural hammers, decided to reverse her impulse and make “functional objects that looked like sculptures, to bring sculpture into the home.”

“I wanted to make it easy for people, so they didn’t have to worry about where to place an object, what to do with it,” she said. “People accept things much more easily if they can do something with an object, if it has some functionality.”

Ms. Boyes began small, both figuratively and literally, designing and creating jewelry and cutlery in the basement of her house in Cape Town. Fifteen years later, her business has mushroomed; she now employs a staff of about 400, many of whom work hand-crafting items in a production facility in Limpopo province, in the north of the country, on land that used to house Ms. Boyes’s family farm. She continues to do all the designing herself. Two years ago, she opened a retail shop in Cape Town and another one in Pretoria, where she grew up. The SoHo location is her first retail store outside of South Africa, and she hopes to continue to expand her presence in America, perhaps opening a store on the West Coast.

But her heart remains in her homeland. “The African continent is a part of my soul,” she said, pausing. “My work doesn’t come directly from an African tradition, but, I don’t know – I would like to think of it as a bridge, maybe, not purely African, not Western art either.”

Carrol Boyes, 118 Prince St., 212-334-3556, www.carrolboyes.co.za.