Second sight
The renaissance of modern African design visionary Jomo Tariku
When Jomo Tariku studied industrial design in the early 1990s, he knew his work would involve solving problems. But what he didn’t know was that he was about to embark on a 30-year project to remake the design industry itself. Today, at 56, the Ethiopian-American furniture maker is recognised as one of the most outspoken and impassioned figures advocating for more diversity and inclusion in the field.
As a child, Tariku would sketch the furniture his diplomat father brought home from trips abroad. What started as a way to pass time during the school holidays became an obsession as he faithfully rendered the details he saw: intricate hand-carved leaves on a table from Thailand, the ornamental patterns on a Persian carpet, and the curvature of Ethiopian ebony stools.
At university, he saw design magazines such as and for the first time and wasforms found in Aksum, an ancient Ethiopian kingdom. Tariku continued to add vocabulary to his language. His ‘Mukecha’ stool was an adaptation of the large African mortars used to grind grain, while the legs and arms on his ‘Nyala’ chair referenced antelope horns.
