Artist Birthday: Kenneth Cobonpue

Kenneth Cobonpue is a contemporary designer of furniture and other household forms who is dedicated to the use of natural and recycled materials, the natural materials often coming from his native Philippines. His unusual forms are typically visually informed by the natural state of the component materials.

Artist Birthday for 16 December: Kenneth Cobonpue (born 1968 Philippines)

Kenneth Cobonpue, Yoda Easy Chair, 2008, nylon, rattan, steel, 134 x 62.9 x 69.9 cm Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, © 2025 Ken Cobonpue (PMA-8258)

The Yoda Easy Chair, introduced in 2008, is just one example of Kenneth Cobonpue’s body of work that includes furniture, accessories, and lighting. All of his work combines natural fibers and organic forms that are both visually stunning and comfortable. Cobonpue’s signature use of rattan is used to beautiful effect in the Yoda chair. The back rest is meant to look like a clump of wild grass. Cobonpue was inspired by the biosphere on his home island and the fields of wild cogon grass. Because of the pliable strength of the frame, Cobonpue named the line Yoda after the Star Wars character who said that Jedi knights bend but never break.

Background

The history of furniture and product design is defined by forms that meet human needs and accommodate the human body through the many changes in fashion. It has also been impacted by concurrent trends in painting, sculpture, and architecture. In essence, design is an excellent gauge of what has happened in history, socially, and artistically.

The rapid industrialization of Western Europe and the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s had a major impact on the mass production and style of furniture. The combination of aesthetic integrity and the industrial design that emerged in the early decades of the 1900s inspired the re-imagining of decorative arts as fine art.

As industrial and technological innovations emerged from World War II (1939–1945), furniture design became less about conformity to the human body and accepted styles, and more about reflecting a modern, progressive society.

Many furniture artists use their designs as a means of personal expression, regardless of current trends. Furniture design artists from Asian and Pacific cultures have revisited the positive aspects of traditional and historic furniture-making in their respective cultures and combined that knowledge with innovative contemporary designs.

Kenneth Cobonpue was born in Cebu City, in the Philippines. He began studying industrial design in 1987 at the Pratt Institute in New York. In 1994, he studied furniture marketing and production at the Export-Akademie Baden-Württemberg, Tübingen, Germany, and he returned to Cebu in 1996 to manage a furniture design firm founded in 1972 by his mother, also a Pratt graduate. His belief that natural materials can enhance modern design inspired the works that form the core of his current collection.

Correlations to Davis programs: Experience Art, Unit 2 Daily Life, 2.5; A Personal Journey 2E, Unit 3 Artists Are Designers, 3.4; Exploring Visual Design 4E, Chapter 1 Line; Davis Collections -- Southeast and Central Asian Art