out of africa

Ethiopian furniture is hot. Design enthusiasts just can’t resist its sensuous surfaces and lean lines, which feel at once ancient and modern.

Slightly pitted tabletops coated in chocolaty patinas and chairs carved out of single slabs of wood are popping up in many sophisticated interiors, from Hollywood Hills to the Hamptons.

“The abstract, sculptural shapes really caught my eye,” says American designer Vicente Wolf, who combed the Ethiopian countryside last year in search of three-legged chairs, piecrust tables, sculptural neck rests, beaded necklaces, and shapely bottle gourds for some of his clients’ homes.

The look, however, isn’t new. “If you flip through any old decorating books, you’ll find a lot of African art in expensive houses,” notes Lord Alistair McAlpine, acknowledged by art-world heavyweights as having a wonderful eye.

He and Lady McAlpine added a sprinkling of Ethiopian furniture to a rambling 14th-century convent they recently converted into a luxury B&B in trendy Puglia, Italy. Of course, any art-history student learns that the fractured faces of Picasso’s 1907 masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, can be traced back to African masks and fetish figures first shown to Picasso by Matisse in 1906. What’s new today is that adventurous art lovers skip familiar masks in favor of everyday domestic objects with great graphic power. Think macho Y-shaped ladders from Mali and low-slung beds (used as side tables) from the Ivory Coast. “I buy Ethiopian furniture simply because it’s beautiful,” says Lord McAlpine, a former antiques dealer.

He collects art and artifacts from some of Africa’s 53 countries but says, “ Ethiopia has been neglected until very recently.” Overlooked and undervalued, Ethiopian furniture may be one of the last collecting fields where $3,000 can still buy a museum-caliber object. Just don’t make the mistake of judging its artistic merit by the low price tag. “Most people haven’t seen Ethiopian artifacts and don’t even know they exist,” explains Wolf, who compares the simplicity of an Ethiopian chair to a Brancusi sculpture. To see if you agree, visit Wolf’s by-appointment showroom stuffed with artifacts from his latest buying trip (www.vw-home.com). So how do you begin? Collectors are very picky about patina. “ Ethiopia’s furniture is highly regarded for its dark, dense wood and well-developed patina,” says dealer Jasmine Dahl, who, together with partner Owen Hargreaves, shows Ethiopian art and artifacts at London’s Portobello market (www.owenhargreaves.com).

The key to collecting all African art—both everyday objects and figurative sculpture—is determining whether it was actually used instead of made for tourists. “One wants to see evidence of continuous use from the people it was made for,” notes Susan Kloman, Sotheby’s African art specialist in New York. Most of the artisans’ names remain a mystery, but if Kloman or her colleagues can track down the maker, prices often soar. Last May, an early-20th-century bowl attributed to a Yoruba craftsman known as “Olowe of Ise” sold for over $500,000. The buyer? The Dallas Museum of Art. Keep an eye on future museum exhibitions and new art books. The prices for Ethiopian artifacts stand ready to rise as scholars begin to trace their lineage.