Ellen caught up with Muriel Sackey at High Point Furniture Market to chat about how EMBRACE is bringing African-inspired creative pieces to the interior design industry. EMBRACE offers ottomans, pillows, wallpapers and more in a variety of prints and patterns that reflect the experiences and traditions of tribes in northern Ghana. A native of Ghana, Muriel hopes to bring the inspirational stories of resilience into the interior design industry.
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This is Muriel Sackey of Embrace. she's joining me to talk about the story behind the company and all the fabulous things that she's doing so thank you muriel for joining us well thank you so talk with me about embrace what is the um ethos behind it well embrace is a company i started and the whole purpose of creating this company is to introduce african inspired decorative pieces and interior design industry our designs are to inspire and hence we started off with i can start off with the wallpaper which i designed from scratch and it focuses on the daily cultural heritage of africa. we have different collections we have those for the geometric pattern or abstract pieces or those that have a tool to shoe concept the concept that you see behind me that with the child issue of the dancer is called takai and that focuses on a dance that is performed in northern ghana by the houses so it's done by a group of men and what they do is they dance in circles they have sticks and they collide their sticks to make rhythm and music while they have drummers behind them and the drum they use is called the talking drum so what it were is called a smock or patakari and what happens is that when they twirl around it gives them a 360 round turn and then it balloons out and gives them a nice flow circular flow which is very pretty so that's where we have the takai dance and your women has also been very inspirational story definitely the woman is called davi and as you can see she is working in her own glam and what brought me to this is that throughout africa and as we speak in present-day africa people carry loads on their head being a child i've had to carry load on my head and for me that is my reality and that is the reality in africa and what brought me to do this is that um i realized that in life no matter who you are you have a load we all have invisible loads that we carry but through the journey of life you have to carry it with delegate with dignity and with elegance and grace so davey here in her own glam is carrying her load and that shows strength it shows balance which we all have to learn to manage life with grace and dignity talk a little bit about the geometrics and what they represent sure the geometric pattern was an inspiration i got from a tribe in ghana and burkina faso ghana and bakunafasu share border and there's a tribe called hausa and there's a tribe in baking a faso called kurunsi and this tribe what they do is they adorn the exterior of their homes with these geometric patterns and these are done mostly by women and as we speak these are patterns that they still do adorn the exterior of their hearts with and for me it was an inspiration to try and reduce this concept in interiors and hence i brought it in by introducing it in our wallpaper collection i love it you've also done some great fabrics and they may not have stories but where's the inspiration from the fabrics that you've done and the other geometric patterns certainly the pillows i have covered in original dutch wax print and this fabric date back in the 1800s and we saw this fabric directly from the original manufacturers of these products during the 1800s these fabrics were shipped into ghana and across west africa and this has become part of our heritage across the continent these fabrics are prominent they're being used as we speak they are very popular so for me it was an honor to introduce these fabrics in our interiors to make statement pieces our mission or my goal is to bring our culture into a design industry and by introducing them in the throat pillow as covers we can use this in any interior setting it could be in a contemporary setting it could be modern it could be eclectic and for me being a designer i watch other designers use different objects or different decorative pieces from all over the world and for me it will be an honor to see them use some of our pieces in their work and that will definitely be a pleasure what i love is that you said this may not be a whole room it could just be that accent that world travel that inspiration for something also yes yes so you don't need a whole lot um you just need one or two pieces to blend in your concept.
