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7 South African Designers at Maison&Objet 2026
As part of each Maison&Objet, the twice-annual design show on the outskirts of Paris, a selected group of Rising Talent from a single country presents their work as a show within the show. For visitors—buyers, journalists, architects, and interior designers—it offers a more focused look at emerging design amid the fair’s broader (and often overwhelming) presentations.
This year, the spotlight was on South Africa, with seven designers and studios bringing together the country’s distinctive mix of craft, cultural heritage, and contemporary design. Representing Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and beyond, the group presented furniture, rugs, lighting, and decorative objects shaped by architectural rigor, family history, curiosity, and even environmental activism.
7 Rising Talent Award Winners at Maison&Objet 2026
These seven designers and studios offer a glimpse at what’s emerging from South Africa’s design scene right now.
Oageng Manana & Tshegofatso Ramothibe of Meetlo Studio
Johannesburg
Photography by Matlhatsi Mogalanyane
Meetlo Studio takes familiar objects—a wine rack, a server—and gives them new forms rooted in South African culture and tradition. “We try to express our work through our African narrative and our cultural customs,” Manana explains. “Our name means ‘customs and traditions.’ So our inspiration is drawn from how our indigenous people used to do things, and also the environment that is around us.”
Meetlo Studio at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.
One example is the Abadimu server, whose name means “for the ancestors.” Manana says his ancestors are a source of wisdom and inspiration, but function remains central to the studio’s work, even when a piece incorporates elaborate carving or unexpected forms.
Everything, including the carving, is done in-house, giving the studio greater control over how those ideas take shape.“We can control the narrative and have that uniqueness to it,” he says. “We can translate our story exactly as we want to envision it.”
Ashleigh Lloyd of Studio Lloyd
Cape Town
Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion
For Maison&Object 2026, Studio Lloyd presented a new line of smaller, more residential-focused pieces. Ashleigh Lloyd is better known for large-scale, high-impact work for hospitality spaces, including lodges and resorts. Her sculptural seating and lighting are made from aluminum, stainless steel, and synthetic rope that is UV-protected, weather-resistant, and built to last. Now, she’s looking toward the residential market with limited-edition table and pendant lamps.
Studio Lloyd at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.
Lloyd believes in supporting and empowering women, sharing knowledge, and cultivating a strong sense of community through her creative process. Her designs use a crochet-based technique, typically thought of as “women’s work,” to create sculptural forms from rope.
“Crochet, through its natural flexibility, tactile quality, and almost meditative rhythm, offers a deeply human counterpoint to the rigidity of architectural lighting,” Lloyd says.
Simphiwe Mlambo
Cape Town
Photography courtesy of Maison&Objet
An interior design graduate of the Durban University of Technology, Simphiwe Mlambo has worked in residential, commercial, and hospitality projects since founding his studio in 2019. A Durban native with family ties to the construction industry, Mlambo considers his life experience central to an approach that balances conceptual thinking with technical knowledge.
Simphiwe Mlambo at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.
The collection he showed at Maison drew inspiration from the grass mats his grandmother made. A bench evokes her loom, while wall panels reference the mats themselves and lamps recall the light she used while weaving.
“The whole idea is to take personal experiences and traditional techniques and translate them into a modern context,” Mlambo explains. That extends to the collection’s largely traditional color palette, which he adapted for a contemporary audience. “But it still has that texture,” he adds. “It still has that African-ness. It still has that feeling of home for me, of course.”
Tanisha Neill of NISH
Cape Town
Photography courtesy of NISH
Tanisha Neill began as a dancer, a background that ultimately informs her relationship to space and her sense of rhythm and perspective in her designs through her studio, NISH. “My material definitely drives my design, and understanding the capabilities and sometimes its restrictions is where the beauty of creation and my ideas come from,” she explains.
NISH at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.
For a new rug that can also be displayed as a wall hanging, Neill collaborated with a collage artist who works by tearing and layering images from vintage magazines. The final form wasn’t predetermined—Neill initially thought the design might become a textile, but once she saw the finished collage, she knew it should be a rug. Hand-tufted in wool and silk, the piece uses varying pile heights to recreate the collage’s sense of depth and layering, with a mountain landscape and bird imagery emerging across its surface.
Neill describes that willingness to let the material influence the outcome as part of her process: “You see the prototype, then you get it back, and you have to be open to adapting, to letting the piece kind of bring itself to life.”
Martin Tallie & Zani Alberts of DEFT Studios
Port Elizabeth (Eastern Cape)
Photography courtesy of DEFT Studios
Like many creatives, Martin Tallie and Zani Alberts, the pair behind DEFT Studios, pivoted during the COVID pandemic: They began as architects and ended up as furniture designers. “A lot of our influences were stolen from architecture, and we were self-taught in woodworking,” Tallie explains. “Our unique vantage point is that we didn’t have a mentor teaching [us].”
DEFT Studios at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.
That architectural influence can be seen in the studio’s interest in simple forms and pure geometries, though the making itself can be quite intricate, combining traditional and contemporary techniques. The Étagère brune et claire, shown at Maison&Objet, exemplifies their desire to create singular pieces with lasting value. Tallie and Alberts produce everything in-house with a small team, maintaining control over both the quality of the work and how it takes shape.
“We love working with our hands,” Tallie says. “We are designers, but we are definitely makers.”
Karlien van Rooyen
Cape Town
Photography courtesy of Karlien van Rooyen
With a background in neuroscience and a love of free diving, Karlien van Rooyen creates objects inspired by anatomy and the organic forms she finds underwater. “Some of them look like lungs or neurons from the brain, but they also look like mushrooms or coral at the same time,” van Rooyen explains.
Karlien van Rooyen at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.
Each ceramic piece is hand-built from stoneware clay, glazed, and fired, while her wooden works are created in collaboration with a woodworker. Van Rooyen begins with a 2D sketch, which is then translated into three dimensions and carved from African teak, a hardwood that bleeds red when fresh.
“Multiple pieces of this hardwood get fused together, and then the large chunks are carved away,” she says. “It looks almost like a brutalist monument.”
Siyanda Mbele of Pinda Interior Design
Durban
Photography by Sinomtho Msweli
A background in engineering and later design led Siyanda Mbele to form Pinda Interior Design. He drew the studio name from the isiZulu word phinda, meaning “again,” a reference to the repetition and rhythm at the core of his creative approach. His work draws from South African Nguni, Zulu, and Ndebele cultures, with pattern informing the shape of each piece and vice versa.
Pinda Interior Design at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Francis Amiand.
That relationship comes through in the wall hanging/rug Mbele showed at Maison&Objet, which uses a pattern of diamonds and triangles drawn from Zulu culture.
Of this imagery, Mbele explains: “The triangle is masculine; the diamond is feminine. When married, the symbols will be stacked. The shapes are made into beaded bracelets, and a woman will give one to a suitor she is interested in. He will wear the bracelet to prove he accepts and wants to spend his life with her.”
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The 2026 Rising Talent Awards jury included Alan Hayward and Garreth Van Niekerk, co-artistic directors of Decorex Africa and 100% Design Africa; interior architect, design researcher, and academic Juliet Kavishe; furniture and lighting designer Thabisa Mjo; and interior designer Donald Nxumalo, who served as creative director of Design Joburg in 2020. The South African edition of the Rising Talent Awards was presented through a new collaboration between Maison&Objet and Decorex Africa.
