Filipino furniture designer a Hollywood hit

CEBU: Multi-award-winner, Kenneth Cobonpue, is regarded by international design magazines as one of the poster boys of Asia’s chic furniture design industry and his unique works have penetrated the luxury market around the world. They can be found on film sets, in the home of US film star Brad Pitt and in leading hotels, establishments and resorts in Paris, London and the Caribbean.

Although Cobonpue credits his natural talent to his mother, Betty, who is a famous local designer, he sharpened his skills at New York’s Pratt Institute where he studied Industrial Design in the late 1980s. He was also apprenticed at leather workshops in Italy and in Germany until 1994, before heading to the United States in the hope of landing a job with one of the big design houses there. However he was forced to return to the Philippines in 1996 when he could not find a spot in the tough US market.

Once back in Cebu, Cobonpue experimented with different designs using humble rattan as the raw material. Perhaps what signalled Cobonpue’s entry into the big league was the 2001 launch of his Voyage collection, cocoon shaped beds that were reminiscent of ancient reed boats. “They aim to take the sleeper into an imaginative journey into dreamland,” Cobonpue said.

The bed became famous when Pitt, an avid art collector, bought one from a showroom that represented Cobonpue designs in Los Angeles. Orders then flooded in from Hollywood, and Cobonpue sets were used in films, including the Ocean’s 11 franchise starring George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Pitt, among others. They are also familiar sights in the hit American television series, “CSI”.

With his reputation at its highest, the patriotic Cobonpue is now busy building a legacy he wants to leave to young Filipino designers. He teaches at the local university and picks promising students to work at his shop. He has also long given up his US green card and is in the early stages of planning his own design academy to impart his art to more Filipinos. In the next five years, Cobonpue said, he wanted to expand to include designing clothes, while toying with some even more radical ideas.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 4^th, 2011.