When did you know that you had an interest in design?
As a young boy, I was always drawing. Sometimes I wasn’t even conscious that I was doing it. I’d be daydreaming in class and the next thing I knew my history book would be covered in sketches. My father traveled a lot for work, and he’d bring back artifacts and decorative pieces from all over the world: copper trays from Zambia, tusks from the Congo. I spent many hours sketching the objects in my home from different angles. They left a strong impression on me. Did I know there was something called design that you could make a living at? No, I certainly couldn’t recognize that at the time.
When did you realize that this could be a career?
(Laughing) I think I’m still trying to realize that! When I came to the United States to attend the University of Kansas in the mid-1980s, my plan was to study computers. Everyone was telling me that that’s where the money was. I took an art class as an elective. The teacher saw that I had talent and encouraged me to switch majors. Later, during the summer session, I walked around the art department looking for someone to talk to. The only door open was the industrial design professor’s. We chatted about my interests and he suggested I look into industrial design. I didn’t even know what that meant at the time, but he explained it to me, and it immediately clicked. I’d always been an object-oriented person; this was something I could wrap my head around.
Why did you choose to focus on modern African furniture?
Back then there was barely anything like that on the market. There was only the Eurocentric thinking of what African furniture was, be it an animal print on a couch or a tribal mask. Things tourists buy when they go to Africa. But I wanted to do something different, informed by my heritage and the craftspeople of Africa but using new materials and new technologies. My college thesis was to design a line of modern African furniture, and really I’ve been pursuing that ever since.
Your signature piece is a three-legged chair. Talk about the significance of that design and what it means to you.
The three-legged stool is common in Ethiopia and other sub-Saharan African countries. Growing up, we had about five of them in my house, so it was natural that I started here; it’s still where I go when I begin sketching a new design. Stools and chairs are incredibly challenging because of the range of people they have to serve in terms of ergonomics. And stability is always an issue. I came up with the idea of the Nyala chair after seeing the horns of the nyala, which is a kind of mountain antelope. The MeQuamya chair is based on the traditional prayer staff used in the Ethiopian Orthodox church. These designs all go back to my culture. I can’t untangle myself from it. It’s what inspires me over and over again. For me, the question is, How can I synthesize these things? What story can I tell here that hasn’t been told before?