She could get the pieces. The hard part was knowing how to choose them.
54kibo began with a problem our founder lived twice, and couldn't buy her way out of.
Nana Quagraine · Founder · Born in Ghana, raised in South Africa, based in Brooklyn.
When Nana and her husband moved into an empty new home in Brooklyn, there was no time to make it a home: she was working in South Africa, he was in Connecticut through the week.
They hired a designer on a recommendation, and when she asked how to even begin, the answer was to move in what they owned and place it where it felt good. She wanted a way to think the decisions through. Instead she got a list of things the house needed, and never a vision.
Furnishing a second home in South Africa, she did everything differently: a careful search, a real process, two proposals to approve. And she hit the same wall: she had signed off on a look with no way to know how it would actually live in her days. Two continents, opposite processes, the same hole. The problem was never the designer. What was missing was a way to think.
She had spent nearly two decades where every decision was reasoned and defensible: engineering, consulting, Goldman Sachs, an infrastructure fund, an MBA from Harvard Business School. Then she came home and chose the things she'd live with for years by feel. Back in Brooklyn in 2016, pregnant with twins, a private question turned urgent: how would Kofi and Efua grow up connected to their African heritage? The contemporary pieces she loved existed across Ghana and South Africa, but were barely visible in the US. She built 54kibo to change that, and running it, she understood that the real problem was the deciding, and no one owned it.
Access puts the pieces in the room. It never tells you how to decide. She's building that way of thinking in the open, and serves on the board of the Black Artists + Designers Guild.
As featured in
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Press & recognitionWhat we believe
The objects people live with shape how home is experienced and remembered over time, and home anchors us as life changes.
Home evolves
A home isn't a finished project. It evolves with life as objects remain and gather meaning over time.
Objects gather meaning
Objects gather meaning through the lives they accompany. Their value grows through the experiences they witness.
Design creates steadiness
Good design creates steadiness: a place that supports life as it evolves.
Her method, at home
She doesn't fill her home with African decor. She brings one piece in first, then places it around how her family actually lives: Bamileke beaded stools light enough for her nine-year-olds to move, Naka pendants over the kitchen island, Lesotho tapestries on the wall. Not a themed room. A home, anchored to a few objects that earn their place.
"I want them to understand that I lived this problem, I'm solving it for myself, and I'm handing them the way of thinking I wish I'd had."
The name
A foundation, laid first.
Kibo is the highest summit of Kilimanjaro; 54 honors the continent's fifty-four countries. In Adinkra, Nkyimu is the grid laid down first so that every symbol placed after it lands in exactly the right place. 54kibo is that foundation: the ground the makers' work is placed upon, and the way a home anchors a life.
The makers
An anchor for more than fifty African designers.
54kibo works with a growing community of designers and artisans across Africa and its diaspora: preserving craft traditions and bringing contemporary African design into homes worldwide.
Where to go next
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Explore the worldview
How we think about choosing objects that last.
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Lighting
Where a room's scale and mood begin.
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Wall art
The pieces that carry a room's identity.
