Common Fabric: Vanessa Gaston at Salone del Mobile 2025

“Common Fabric draws inspiration from Visayan fishing and weaving villages and the reviving historical vernacular of tribes and coastal communities, pondering how ancestry, cultural memory, archipelagic geography, and livelihood play into experiential environments of built spaces and objects,” opens design collective Vanessa Gaston. “It is a showcase of leaf to life.”

Led by Dumaguete-based architect-designer Vanessa Gaston, the studio will be having its first exhibit at Salone del Mobile’s Salone Satellite from April 8 to 13, an event described by the gathering as the first “to have devoted particular attention to young designers, instantly becoming the meeting place par excellence for entrepreneurs/talent scouts and the most promising designers.”

In previous editions, a number of prototypes presented at the satellite have gone into production and selected designers who took part have made their mark in the design scene.

Gaston says the satellite provides an opportunity to share her advocacy of activating local groups of artisans and their native materials to a global audience.

“By combining tradition and innovation into the contemporary setting in my work, I translate the Philippine Islands’ cultural history and memory, hoping to reconnect the vernacular back to objects and the built environment.”

Highlighted in the showcase is the Marina fish basket chair, which was inspired by a traditional trap fishing technique called ‘bobo.’ The designer shares that this is her chosen entry to the Salone Satellite Awards 2025 as it aims to peacefully protest current reclamation conflicts in her residence, Dumaguete City.

The designer’s 2025 collection is rooted in the same advocacy, featuring the interchangeable Tanaw Customizable Rug by weavers in Tubigon Bohol, which was designed to create interaction with the user and acknowledge the human aspect of the desire for change.

It also features the Juanita Dining Chair and the Tala Bar Cabinet. The former is a contemporary expression of the traditional cane woven chair, while the latter is a storage piece following how vertical and horizontal structural parts are braced by triangles forming diamond patterns in old Visayan houses.

Lamps also shine at Gaston’s body of work, one of them being the light, dynamic, and compact Ballerina Lamp that uses Negros Oriental ‘sinamay’ or abaca fabric.

Another is the Anito Lamp, a stack of uniquely carved wooden beads that represent the different heads put together by the community of artisans that form the spirit of the studio’s design practice. The piece boasts four stages of assembling, with its design alluding to Filipino anitos or ancestral spirits.

Made out of ‘pinyapel’ or pineapple paper from the Design Center of the Philippines, the studio also explored the potential of laser cutting Philippine indigenous/ traditional patterns onto paper in the Pineapple Paper Drinks Table. Gaston shares that the piece is also a cry to conserve the endangered craft of wood carving.

Completing the furniture collection are the Tala Low Table and the Nomad Chair, a pair made for floor seating. The Tala Low Table follows the same concept as the Tala Bar Cabinet, while the Nomad Chair is a homage to Filipino cultural history and practice, of moving and being from other islands. It is foldable, light and easy to transport. It also expresses the Visayan behavior of “yaka” or “yaka-yaka” (to squat), not as ceremonial as in Japanese culture, but more so in ordinary, everyday living.

“Each item holds a powerful narrative of our interwoven realities,” Gaston ends. “I hope that this collection will help people see the invisible strand that connects communities and practices to the fabric of life.” •

vanessagaston.com