M’Afrique by Moroso

A little known fact about me.
In 1999 I set up a company called Tink which sold handmade, recycled products made by artists and cooperatives in South Africa. I had traveled there in 1998 and was overwhelmed by the ingenuity of the crafts people that needed to survive and thus developed businesses creating beautiful home furnishings out of recycled materials to sell to tourists.
I established relationships with individuals and cooperatives and set about spreading the word here. This turned into a wholesale company and for a few years we were flourishing. Then I realized that I hadn’t illustrated in a while and something had to give; I’m sure you can guess what that was.
I still love the products I sold and learned so much from the experience.

This brings me to the subject of M’Afrique by Moroso which I discovered today.
It’s a collaboration between Moroso, an Italian furniture company and various artists and exponents of contemporary African culture.
Patrizia Moroso explains that “looking at Africa through the eyes of contemporary art, photography, architecture and design is perhaps the most appropriate way of approaching this vast, powerful continent, so creatively rich and diverse that today it is still one of the greatest sources of inspiration for modern design”.
The woven plastic chairs struck me as I worked with telephone wire weavers who made bowls for us and the bright patterns are reminiscent of those.
I also love Dutch Wax prints and have my own plans to cover my favorite armchair (the one in the picture a few day ago) with a slipcover made in a Dutch Wax print.