New York design brand TRNK has juxtaposed furniture by seven contemporary design studios with vintage African masks and furniture for its Provenanced exhibition.
The exhibition, which is online-only, features work by designers including Sardinia-based Pretziada, Tbilisi design studio Rooms, and Ethiopian American artist and industrial designer Jomo Tariku.
Among the pieces showcased is the Nyala chair by Tariku, whose shape was inspired by the east African mountain antelope, and the stoneware and raffia Bona lamp by Barcelona-based ceramicist Marta Bonilla.
The Bona lamp is made from stoneware and raffia
The designers featured in Provenanced were chosen specifically to let viewers explore the connection between the contemporary designs and the vintage works. "I wanted to achieve a visual seamlessness with the selected works so that viewers could easily connect the dots between past and present, non-western and western," Dixon said. "All of the works share similar visual languages when it comes to form, line and materiality."
"I also wanted to highlight the breadth and depth of these African and Indigenous contributions to western design by selecting designers with varied origin stories and levels of intentionality. Not all of the designers would consider African or Indigenous art forms as primary sources of inspiration."

A number of the pieces on show, both modern and historic, are forms of seating, which Dixon sees as an example of a storied,...