Guy Stair Sainty is the son of Christopher Lawrence Sainty. His father was Chief Engineer and Director of Carrier Engineering Co Ltd. He attended Highfield School in Hampshire and Westminster School, London, and continued his education in Rome and at The College of Law in London. In 1979, he moved to New York and founded the Stair Sainty Gallery. He married, firstly, on 5 February 1983, Cynthia Holland Ash, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Hohne Volk of New York City and Quaker Hill, Pawling, New York State, in the chapel of Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan, New York City. After his first marriage, which produced his children Charles, Clementine and Della, ended in divorce in 1993 and ecclesiastical annulment, Sainty married Elizabeth Pierson, a private dealer in 19th and 20th century art in New York, in Washington on 28 May 1995 and in a second ceremony at the London Oratory on 28 September 1995. With Elizabeth he had three children, George, Julian and Arabella. In 2005 they founded Stair Sainty Ltd at a premises at 38 Dover Street, London W1S 4LN, which they share with two other art dealers, Edmondo di Robilant and Marco Voena. Sainty has a half-brother by his father's first wife, Sir John Sainty, retired Clerk of the Parliaments.
Appointments, awards, and decorations
Sainty has been involved in the world of chivalry and heraldry for many years. He is a Fellow with the International Commission on Orders of Chivalry. Sainty is a correspondent member of the Real Academia Matritense de Heraldica y Genealogia. He has served as one of three consultants to the Committee on the Orders of Saint John of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and The Alliance of the Orders of St. John of Jerusalem. Sainty has served as a County Staff Officer in the St. John Ambulance. He was first appointed an Associate Officer, then promoted to an Associated Commander on 16 June 1989, and again promoted to the rank of Associate Knight of the Venerable Order of Saint John on 30 July 1992. He was transferred to full membership with the change of Statutes in 1999, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the Priory in the US until June 2008. Sainty is an armiger, having had arms granted by the College of Arms in London, matriculated at the Court of the Lord Lyon in Edinburgh, and certified by the Cronista de Armas in Spain. The blazon of these arms is Azure a Chief Gules over all in pale two Hippocampuses respectant Or and in the Azure two Keys palewise wards upwards and outwards the bows linked in Or. Sainty's armorial bookplate shows the membership insignia of the Order of St. Januarius, the Venerable Order of Saint John, the Order of St. Gregory the Great, the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, the Order pro merito Melitensi of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Order of Saint Joseph of Tuscany. Sainty has also served as a senior county staff officer to H.R.H. Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia. He was formerly a member of the SavoyOrder of Saints Maurice and Lazarus but resigned in 2006 and is the Vice-Grand Chancellor of the Sacred Military Constantinian Order of Saint George, of which he is a Bailiff Grand Cross. On 15 January 2014, Sainty was awarded the rank of Commander of the Order of Isabella the Catholic by King Juan Carlos I and received unrestricted permission to wear the decorations on 27 July 2017.
In December 2003, Rosario Poidimani sued Sainty in an Italian court for libel, on account of his published analysis of the claims to the Portuguese throne of Maria Pia de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança and Rosario Poidimani. In March 2016, the Italian Court of Appeal of Venice decided in Sainty's favour, rejecting the claim of Poidimani.
