How Stephen Burks Man Made is bringing the story of a centuries-old African textile to an entirely new audience

Visit virtually any major art museum in the world and you’ll find a length of Kuba cloth, an intricate raffia textile handcrafted by the Kuba people in the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Kuba Kingdom formed in the 17th-century and prospered for the next 250 years, thanks to prowess in trade and agriculture. This wealth buoyed the region’s artistic traditions, particularly the exquisite Kuba cloth, which became status symbols among the ruling class. The kingdom declined following internal rebellions and brutal colonisation; so too, it was thought, did the Kuba cloth tradition.

During a visit to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Stephen Burks and Malika Leiper of the practice Stephen Burks Man Made discovered something different: that this centuries-old Kuba artform is thriving, albeit via a new generation of artists and makers. ‘It’s not a dying artform. It’s perception in the West that really revolves around prestige cloths, which are commodified,’ Burks explains. ‘But there's another aspect of Kuba, in the villages.’

‘We wanted to prove that in order for Kuba to have a future, there must be a present,’ adds Leiper.

Kuba’s ‘present’ has become a focus within Burks and Leiper’s practice. The pair have created a documentary; an exhibition in Japan; and designed the scenography for an upcoming show at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, all devoted to their research. But a recent project has the potential to bring the story of Kuba to a wider public still – a collaboration with the Italian wood veneer company, Alpi.

The company, which was established in 1919, has become renowned for its designer collaborations with titans including Ettore Sottsass, Alessandro Mendini, Konstantin Grcic, Patricia Urquiola and Ron Arad as a way to showcase the aesthetic possibilities and technical range of its products.

‘My passion for design has guided me on a continuous path of research, born out of a desire for experimentation,’ Vittorio Alpi, the company’s third-generation president says. ‘To give three-dimensionality to Alpi surfaces, I invite designers to create unique pieces unfettered by the restraints of industrial production.’

Burks and Leiper, at the invitation of Alpi, decided to translate the intricate, geometric patterns found in traditional textiles into a collection of sculptural furnishings called the Lost Cloth Object. They were presented at Design Miami 2025 earlier in December, as part of the fair’s 2.0 section, curated by Glenn Adamson.

‘Our practice is always looking at the intersection between craft, community and industry,’ says Burks. ‘The Lost Cloth Object is a conceptual starting point for a commercial veneer that we’ll develop with Alpi.’

To create the design, Burks and Leiper worked with the Alpi team to create a Kuba-inspired design using thousands of pieces of veneer, the laser-thin sheets of timber that are derived from FSC-certified poplar.

‘What we love about Kuba is that there's repetition and variation. So you see the system at play, but within the system there’s a lot of change,’ Leiper explains. ‘Each motif of the cloth has a certain meaning about social hierarchy – It could tell you about who made the cloth, who’s wearing the cloth. It’s also sometimes about mimicking shapes in nature, so it’s a language in itself.’

The variegated veneers add another layer of meaning to the pieces: just like Kuba was considered a lost art, the types of wood that the veneers mimic, from Alpi’s Legacy Collection, replicate endangered species like ebony, teak, rosewood and zebrawood.

‘The legacy collection is made up from woods that are no longer available or protected such as mahogany. So we reproduced them, without harming the trees and environment,’ Vittorio Alpi says.

The rhythmic Kuba patterns wrap a curved platform, a set of round stools and a circular partition with integrated shelving, an array that nods to Alpi’s postmodern collaborations but also evokes a sacred, ceremonial site – the context in which Kuba cloth continues to be used.

While the objects themselves won’t go into production, the Lost Cloth Object pattern will continue to be developed. ‘The idea that this is a surface wrapping over the sculptural forms connects back to Alpi’s postmodern traditions. But here we're doing it in natural wood and also with an African pattern,’ Burks says. ‘As we went deeper into the story of the Kuba Kingdom, we wanted to make a piece that was honouring all of those traditions.’

Also read: Stephen Burks and Malika Leiper transform everyday mats into sculptural seating in Senegal