Amechi Mandi

Amechi Mandi is a London-based product and furniture designer of Nigerian and Cameroonian heritage. His practice draws deeply from African textiles and cultural traditions, celebrating forms and narratives that are self-determined and centuries old.

Working with bold shapes and tactile materials, Mandi explores how heritage can be reimagined in contemporary design. Storytelling runs through his work, where colour, texture and form come together to honour the past while looking to the future. Pink is a recurring thread - “to me, pink means life.”

What colour do you find yourself using the most?

I find myself using pink a lot. When I do colour combinations, there’s always a lot of pink in there. I choose colours from the heart - if I don’t like it, I don’t feel it. So when I do colour combinations, it’s predominantly pink with something else - but there is a lot of pink in my work. I read recently that pink is life, so go figure.

What does colour mean to you?

I grew up in a society where there was a lot of colour. Colour was just natural - it’s just breath. It’s normal. We don’t go without colour. But at the same time, there are a lot of neutral colours. This comes from outside influences - for example, people wear black to funerals now, which has come from European influences.

How do you use colour to tell stories?

My work gets its inspiration from indigenous cultures in West and Central Africa, where I’m from. So I borrow the stories that have lived in this culture for a long time and I interpret them and give them a more contemporary spin. Traditionally, colours in this culture all mean something; they all have a communicative expression. My work isn’t necessarily using a specific colour to communicate something; I’m using it to show my culture, my heritage, in the modern context that I live in.

How do you strike a balance between tradition and reinvention?

I get inspiration from tradition and reinterpret it into something more contemporary. I spin tradition to get something more approachable and relatable in a contemporary context. Without tradition, there wouldn’t be the present. So tradition and reinvention work together. One cannot exist without the other.

What influences colour in your work?

My designs are influenced by the vividness of colour, and that comes from my cultural heritage. That’s the first step. And since I’ve started working with colour more (I originally trained as a product and furniture designer), my colour palette has really developed. So now every time I go to create a piece of work, colour has to come into play.