Amechi Mandi and Kelechi Ejikeme

After greater than a decade as a lawyer at top-tier banking corporations reminiscent of Goldman Sachs and Société Générale, Nigerian-British Kelechi Ejikeme left the company world to comply with her ardour for inside design.

His rug assortment is impressed by Nigeria’s various terrain: rolling hills, meandering rivers, expansive savannas and dense forests, and jogs my memory of the view from airplanes.

“So once you interpret it right into a rug or rug, it is symbolic,” she mentioned once I met her at her sales space on the Decorex inside design honest held in London final month.

“It’s like, each minute, that is what we really step on day by day.”

Made from jute, a sturdy and eco-friendly materials, every rug integrates these pure parts.

Jute is usually grown domestically for its edible leaves, not its fibers. It comes from the identical plant used for ewedu soup, a staple in southwestern Nigeria.

To convey his imaginative and prescient to life, Ejikeme has his rugs produced in India and Nepal, the place jute is extra broadly developed right into a thriving business.

Also current on the occasion was Amechi Mandi, a Cameroonian-Nigerian inside designer who received House & Garden journal’s 2022 Rising Star award.

She wasn’t exhibiting any of her work, however had simply spoken in a aspect session about her transition from vogue to inside design.

Mandi has a level in furnishings and product design, however after working within the vogue business and later at a design firm, he grew to become more and more dissatisfied with the dearth of genuine African-inspired inside materials.

Too typically, he discovered, they relied on “cliché” postcolonial motifs.

This led him to discover his Cameroonian and Nigerian heritage, specializing in pre-colonial traditions.

Recognizing the untapped potential of indigenous textiles that’s fading from reminiscence, particularly with the rise of “ankara” wax prints, a European import that has change into symbolic of African design, Mandi got down to revive these cultural parts.

She started integrating conventional strategies and patterns into her designs, and her work now features a standard assortment of cushions and throws, in addition to a profitable wallpaper collaboration.

“People have mentioned to me, ‘Oh, your work is not African,’ as a result of they need to see the Ankara prints. It caught within the minds a lot,” Mandi instructed me.

“I draw inspiration from indigenous traditions and cultures after which give it a extra modern twist,” she added.

Listening to Mandi I noticed how a lot I too had come to affiliate fashionable African design with Ankara materials.

This material has dominated African vogue and design, making its mark on the worldwide stage in latest many years.

And so, as I wandered by the exhibition, it was straightforward to imagine that African designs have been absent from this vital gathering.

When she began, Ejikeme juggled legislation and inside design, working in a single through the week and the opposite on weekends. It did not take her lengthy to comprehend the place her true ardour lay.

“In one world, you are making an attempt to include your power, your self or your expression simply so you do not ruffle any feathers, whereas in one other world you may’t even extinguish your power,” he mentioned.

Since transitioning into design full-time six years in the past, she has tackled quite a lot of tasks, from properties and workplaces to movie units.

Last 12 months he launched his rug assortment, including a brand new dimension to his work in his studio Swallow and Tea.

“It’s a very new factor and I’ve solely carried out two reveals, however to date I’ve had principally residential and retail consumers, primarily from Europe, most likely as a result of my first present was in Belgium. Decorex was my first present within the UK ,” Ejikeme mentioned.

Most of Mandi’s clients are European, a pattern he attributes to the prevailing desire amongst many Africans for overseas merchandise.

“Most Africans nonetheless favor to purchase a Gucci,” he mentioned.

“I’ve some Africans purchasing, however they are not like on a regular basis Africans. They have been all folks born and raised overseas and deeply linked to African heritage and tradition.”

Both Ejikeme and Mandi agree that inside design in Africa remains to be creating.

Unlike vogue, which has lengthy been a focus for Africans and has just lately seen notable progress, the sphere of African inside design is simply beginning to set up itself.

Ejikeme mirrored on his first impartial undertaking in 2013, which coincided with a brand new wave of Africans in London getting into high-paying sectors reminiscent of funding banking.

He aimed to create areas that not solely exude luxurious and luxury, but additionally seize a way of residence for his African shoppers, reflecting their heritage in a significant method.

“I used to be perplexed as a result of I’m an individual who loves antiques. I like vintage design. When I went to design college in London, my favourite factor was the historical past of design, like studying about all of the totally different durations – Victorian, Edwardian, and many others. – and what distinguished one from the opposite.

“But there was nothing like that in Africa. There is nothing just like the historical past of African design as a result of we have not actually stored that hint,” he mentioned.

This realization motivated her to start classifying African design durations to higher perceive and protect the continent’s design evolution, an ongoing undertaking she started throughout her final 10 years residing in Nigeria earlier than returning to London l final 12 months.

Ejikeme visited locations such because the Bogobiri artwork gallery in Lagos, which displayed a mixture of historical sculpture and fashionable artwork.

He additionally visited distributors in quiet corners of Nigerian markets, the place he met workplace workers utilized by Igbo elders in pre-colonial instances. He started classifying the objects he discovered primarily based on their historic interval, late Nineties or precolonial.

He is not carried out but and desires to spend extra time utilizing them in his inside design tasks.

Mandi believes that following developments in how we design our properties and different areas has traditionally by no means been an African factor, particularly through the centuries of the transatlantic slave commerce.

“Traditionally, interiors have by no means been a precedence. We’ve all the time been fascinated by performance. We have been extra fascinated by adorning our exteriors, like portray the partitions, portray the outside,” he mentioned.

“Every civilization has developed, however we have not had the possibility to evolve due to the 400 years of being arrested with the transatlantic slave commerce.”

He added that Africans have been “continually fleeing” through the slave commerce, so “how are you going to suppose, ‘I’ve this home, I’ve to do the inside nicely, let me put in that bench, let me weave this material’?” Society hasn’t had an opportunity to evolve that method.”

Both Ejikeme and Mandi famous that many rich and distinguished Africans, from celebrities to entrepreneurs, typically have interiors that lack a distinctly African id.

However, Ejikeme believes that that is altering as extra Africans earn disposable revenue and more and more spend money on adorning their properties in a method that tells their private story and captures their experiences.

“If you’ve gotten a product that may be made stunning, refined and memorable, that tells a narrative or has which means, it’s going to attraction to Africans and different people who find themselves not African,” he says.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a Nigerian journalist and author primarily based in Abuja and London.