The furniture designers centring Nigerian cultural symbols

For three years, a peculiar pivot has happened within Nigeria’s burgeoning design culture – a trend of designers, both emerging and established, looking to the zeitgeist of 70s-90s, or even pre-colonial Nigeria, for inspiration. Within furniture and textile design particularly, rather than attempting to fit into global trends, creatives are embracing their own heritage and identity more than ever before, using local materials found in their environment and constructing furniture pieces inspired by culturally relevant symbols or artefacts (masquerade, cosmology, and ritualistic objects in their culture) and even childhood memories. While their reasons lie in asserting their identity, their effort in building a visual language is made to tackle the idea that innovation only comes from the West.

These creatives are actively gaining inspirations from passed-down stories, or traditions they can interweave with their modern design interface, to make very conscious designs that appear extraordinary and functional at the same time.

This trend is gaining traction particularly at Design Week Lagos, an annual festival founded by Titi Ogufere in 2019 that celebrates West African designs across disciplines such as architecture, interior design, industrial design, furniture, graphics, and technology, positioning Lagos as a global design capital.

The furniture and industrial design section is the intriguing one-to-watch, filled with spectacular designs that are culturally nuanced. Example: Myles Igwebuike’s Oji Sofa that is inspired by the segmental lines of the kola nut, a sacred fruit in the Igbo culture of South-Eastern Nigeria. Or Aro by Antony Oyebode, a coffee table that draws inspiration from traditional cooking stoves and consists of a base made from clay and a glass tabletop, merging cultural and modern aesthetics. This trend further fuels the city’s design language of exquisite craftsmanship, which despite the nurture of unbridled perfections, create room for young and emerging talents to fail until they can find their own creative language that defines the prospect of their practice and career.

Tolu Rufai, a furniture and industrial designer, began his design practice in 2018, while studying a five-year architecture programme at Howard University. It was also the time his interest in exploring design through a cultural tapestry began to take shape. The contemporary concept he was already introduced to didn’t sit right with him. With a cultural context, there was a means to connect and expand his ideas on pre-existing histories that were intertwined with his cultural identity. Though he mentions that this path has been challenging, it has also been affirming and meaningful. “Creating designs rooted in and reflective of cultural identity carries a deep sense of responsibility. Each phase has strengthened my sense of purpose and deepened my commitment to the work,” he says.

His prominent work, the Patewo chair, is inspired by the Patewo hairstyle – a visual metaphor for applause and unity in Yoruba culture. Possessing bold forms that blend modern design with traditional African craftsmanship, the chair serves as both functional furniture and artistic expression. “It pays tribute to the poetic symbolism of the Yoruba language, celebrating heritage, identity, and the cultural connections within the African diaspora,” Tolu says. He is also the designer behind the famous Zangbeto side table – a sculptural piece that reinterprets the spiritual and cultural symbolism of the Zangbeto masquerade from Benin. Tolu designed it using layered wooden fins arranged in a spiraling, tapering form to evoke the dynamic, spinning motion of the ritual dance. He also expanded its functionality as a shelf.

For a designer of his caliber, curiosity for the future is what fuels his creative intuition but he’s deeply-rooted in seeing the best of it from a cultural perspective. “Culture is not just a source of inspiration, it’s the foundation of our design practice,” he tells me. “We engage deeply with cultural narratives, both from our immediate context and across the continent, as a way of grounding our work in meaning and memory.” He also co-founded Salu Iwadi Studio with Sandia Nassila which started as a conversation to consciously build a hub for all the things they find interesting and a gateway that allows them to bridge tradition and innovation while also gaining ancestral knowledge and historical references into dialogue with contemporary needs and future possibilities.

For Olamide Jinadu, Lagos fuels her creative passion but contributes nothing to her inspiration and that, she explains, comes from living in a city that pushes for progress in destructive ways. “I find that I need a degree of stillness to feel truly inspired, and Lagos doesn’t quite offer that,” she says. She’s the designer behind Studio Libertine, which she founded in 2022 as a fabricator-focused design house but has slowly evolved into her full practice as a furniture designer, where her substantial works like the Jakuta chair have become a connection between her design ethos and her culture.

The Jakuta chair is inspired by Orisa Sango from Yoruba cosmology. The piece serves as both a totem and a chair, and came to her during a reflection on the concept of duality, ultimately extending her knowledge about African spirituality and offering her a tangible expression of a concept that is universal and infinite. Despite culture, she is inspired by sound and smell.

It’s important to note that this is not just a trend to these designers but a means to connect with the past, whether investigating ancestral histories, uncovering old memories or seeking inspiration from cultures that appeal to their curiosity. The interesting part seems to be the impact it possesses especially on the western design scene. They are drawn to the stories and vernacular materials, whelmed by the exquisite craftsmanship wielded, and it doesn’t come as a shock that these designers are actively making their way across Lagos’ border and bringing their designs to the doors of Milan design week or London and Dubai. It’s this interest that has shaped its virality, creating a space for the international appeal of Lagos designs.

Johnson Athanasius’ practice is pre-informed by his past as a prodigy child who used to be the drummer boy at his local church when he was five. But his design practice took flight after he got into architecture school in 2013. His prominent work, the Apo armchair is inspired from a harmonious perspective. Coined from the Yoruba word Apọ̀, meaning we are many, the armchair is made of woven knots. “ While crafting the Apo armchair, I drew upon values of collaboration,” says Johnson. “I remember, as a kid, sitting with my friends on the roots of a big tree, we weaved the knots to resemble the interlocking roots of a tree.”

This communal element speaks eloquently in his practice. “There’s a concept known as Àjọṣe meaning communal living. Àjọṣe emphasises the belief that individuals thrive best when they live and work in harmony with others. This value is deeply rooted in proverbs like ‘A kì í fi ọwọ́ kan pàtẹ́wọ́,’ which translates to ‘We cannot clap with one hand’. This proverb emphasises the importance of cooperation, highlighting that achieving success often requires the combined efforts of multiple individuals.” It is also the reason he collaborates with artisans, executing and reinventing prototypes that are woven into different variations and stories.

Zoë Ene trained as an industrial designer at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she recalls being conflicted with what was being taught than what she knew of her Igbo heritage and its craft philosophies. “As a young designer, I was eager to challenge that gap – probably annoying a few lecturers in the process – and became interested in work that explored the opposite,” she says.

Now, she doesn’t just make work that is culturally interwoven but uses said perspective to document theories, methods and tools that aid her practice and others. Her recent work, the IO stool, is shaped like a kola nut, called isi oji in Igbo, and includes perforated motifs that appear in triangular gaps, giving it a structural impression.

Homenkà is the platform that Zoë founded to shape her design language and lead her closer to deep cultural research. It’s a portmanteau of the Igbo word Omenkà (artist) with the word Home, which reflects the commitment to homegrown approaches to designing objects. “My goal is to make the value of Nigerian traditional design visible, usable, and meaningful in everyday life – especially in Nigerian homes and shared spaces. We’re just getting started, and I’m excited for what’s ahead.”

Her forthcoming work Ncho 01 is a prototype mancala board (also known as oware, ayo, bao, or ncholokoto from which the board gets its name) and is centred on continuing Igbo woodcarving making traditions and embodies the duality of function and beauty that defines much of African object design. “At our booth, people taught each other how to play, shared memories of using stones or digging holes in the earth to create boards as kids, and responded with joy at seeing a familiar game reimagined.”

Reclaiming the narratives of their heritage is not just a bus stop for these designers, they are also looking inward, extending their knowledge to those who care deeply about this practice. With that said, it wouldn't come as a surprise seeing further innovations of this ilk that would shape the future of design.

Closer Look

Ugonna-Ora shares projects, spaces, groups and even a documentary to learn more about the burgeoning Nigerian furniture design industry.

Home Sweet Home: a collective curated by Josh Egesi and consisting of six designers. The project is a passionate response to this prevailing emergence of Nigerian design. Set in the style of a home within one of Lagos’ emerging locations, the maker space of 16/16, it offers a reimagined perspective on what home means in our contemporary context.

A Third Space: Co-founded by Nelson CJ and Ayo Lawson, the space which is now curated only by Nelson CJ is uniting creatives from different disciplines where they have conversations that shape the future of their respective workforce.

Design Week Lagos: A festival founded by Titi Ogunfere in 2019 that aims to celebrate the innovation and creative diversity of West Africa’s design scene. The festival returns every year with more evidence that design in this part of the world is growing and evolving.

The Hurdle: A space where creatives in different disciplines converge to celebrate the beauty of creative storytelling, telling their experiences navigating the creative economy in the country and internationally.

Made by Design: A 2021 documentary project by Netflix that features the promising nature of Nigerian design and showcases the talents and zeal of both local designers, architect and overall creatives working in the design sector in Nigeria.