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Following a Nigerian Thread, a Designer Unwraps an African Region
Lani Adeoye brings her Nigerian heritage and global perspective to a West African crafts display at Salone del Mobile.
This article is part of our Design special report previewing Milan Design Week.
Lani Adeoye is a globe-straddler.
The designer moves between teaching design at her alma mater, Parsons School of Design in New York City, and managing projects at her company, Studio-Lani, in her hometown, Lagos, Nigeria.
This week, Ms. Adeoye, 35, will be somewhere in the middle, having curated “Craft West Africa,” an exhibition at SaloneSatellite, the annual showcase of emerging designers at the Salone del Mobile fair in Milan whose theme this year is “New Craftsmanship: A New World.”
“I fiercely believe in this rich yet undervalued area of design,” she said of handmade objects.
Marva Griffin Wilshire, the founder and curator of SaloneSatellite, said that once she had settled on Africa as a focus of the 2025 edition, she asked Ms. Adeoye to participate.
“With her strong links to the region, I wanted Lani to be a part of the project, to conduct research and bring the insights to the fair,” she said. Ms. Adeoye obliged with a roster of artisans from Senegal, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Nigeria, who will be exhibiting contemporary pieces made with traditional methods, including stools and tables.
The products from Burkina Faso, for instance, are bronzes fabricated through lost-wax casting, a technique of pouring molten metal into a mold, while the items from Cameroon are hand-carved in wood.
