Just 0.32 per cent of the furniture produced by leading brands is created by black designers, according to research by Ethiopian American industrial designer Jomo Tariku.
Tariku made the calculation by recording the designer of each collection from 150 of the world's leading furniture brands listed on the Swiss products site Architonic over the past year.
The Virginia-based designer told Dezeen that he was not surprised by the finding.
"We are not represented in the design world"
"My research put numbers to what most black designers have been saying; that we are not represented in the design world," said Tariku.
First reported in home design magazine Business of Home, his research looked at 4,417 branded collections. Of these, only 14 were collaborations with black designers, equating to 0.32 per cent. Tariki's research can be found here. Jomo Tariku's research found that 0.32 per cent of the furniture produced by leading brands is created by black designers
"My discovery was specific to furniture as I am a furniture designer," added Tariki, who previously worked as a data scientist for the World Bank Group. "Others have said the same thing about fashion, architecture and even in graphic design."
He prepared the data as part of a presentation entitled Black design: History, theory & practice, which was presented at Princeton's African American studies graduate seminar, after noticing that the design industry was much less div...