fernando laposse is forming the future of craft Throughout Fernando Laposse’s work, the future of style starts in a field, where a plant is grown for more than its commodity value and a material brings the memory of the location and people that made it.
Speaking with designboom, the Mexican designer traces his practice through corn husks, agave fibers, wore down hillsides, and the village of Tonahuixtla, where making ends up being a method to develop an economy around what the land can sustain.
His items move through galleries and public installations, however their reasoning starts in other places, with seeds, farming seasons, soil, and relationships that have actually been maintained over years.
‘Craft is different, and it is used really in a different way in practice for really various factors around the world,‘ Laposse tells designboom. ‘In the West, or in Europe and the industrialized world, this go back to craft is almost anthropological. It can even feel like a wellness thing.‘ In his area, he states, the word brings another weight.
‘In Latin America, which is what I know best, craft is still connected to an idea of hardship.‘ This is the tension that runs through his work. He is drawn to hand-making, however he declines to glamorize the conditions around it.
Fernando Laposse, 2025. image © Angie Smith, Angie Ro via instagram fernando laposse looks beyond craft as design The works of designer Fernando Laposse typically begin with simple plant matter. Totomoxtle utilizes the husks of treasure corn, which are peeled from the cob, flattened, and laminated onto paper or textile support to develop a veneer-like surface. The natural tones range from deep purples to creams, browns, and pale golds, with each sheet carrying the color of the native corn range that produced it. The product is cut and put together like marquetry, forming furniture and wall surface areas that keep the grain and irregularity of the husk noticeable.
Yet the product is only one part of the story. Laposse describes that a huge part of his practice has actually been changing the perception of craft in Mexico, both for makers and for customers.
‘Part of what I try to do with my work is redefine what craft suggests in Mexico, raise the outcomes of what we can do here, and change the preconception that craft has to be something you provide for survival, or that, on the client’s side, it has to be something really low-cost.‘
The aim is cultural as much as material. Craft becomes a method to move value back towards rural labor and agricultural knowledge.
research trip, Totomoxtle, 2026, Fernando Laposse with @we_are_dots. image courtesy the artist via instagram farming as the website of innovation While lots of designers turn toward existing methods, Fernando Laposse states he set himself a various challenge.
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I set myself an individual challenge as a designer not to utilize existing crafts,’the artist states. For him, the problem is connected to class, inequality, and access to the marketplace. A designer can get in a community, adjust a traditional things, and make it preferable to a new audience, but that structure can leave the same imbalance in location. ‘The majority of those methods still rely on the privilege of the designer, or the access to market that the designer has and the artisans do not.‘
His answer has been to develop brand-new craft systems around agriculture. ‘I would rather concentrate on design and craft empowering something else. In my case, that something else is farming,‘ he continues.
With Totomoxtle, that means maintaining heritage corn ranges that were pressed out by commercial farming and low grain costs. ‘What I finish with corn, as far as I know, no one else does in the world. It is a craft that is extremely specific to my practice and now to the neighborhood I deal with.‘
Corn Kumiko, 2023, Fernando Laposse. image courtesy the artist Totomoxtle constructs a micro-economy from corn In Tonahuixtla, Totomoxtle turns the corn husk into an alternative income, while providing farmers a reason to reintroduce native seeds. The job moves away from the grain as the only financial worth of corn. Instead, the husk becomes a style product
, and the field becomes part of a wider production system. Gradually, that system has grown around training, seed selection, land preparation, and financial backing before the harvest gets here.
‘Over the last ten years, because it has actually formally been ten years this year, we have actually been building an entire ecosystem where design and craft are at the center,‘ Laposse states. ‘They are the motor of everything, however they move all these other cogs and wheels. They concentrate on ecology, biodiversity, and soil regrowth.‘
His language is mechanical, however the process is sluggish and agricultural. A piece of furniture may be the part seen in a gallery, while the work starts months earlier with planting and support for the families who grow the crop.
Furry Mirror, 2023, Fernando Laposse. image courtesy the artist the gallery brings a human scale Laposse is aware that once the work leaves the town, much of that intricacy can vanish into a polished surface. To withstand that flattening, he has recorded Totomoxtle from the start, frequently showing up with a camera and bringing video into exhibits and talks.
‘With this job in particular, I have actually tried to produce a lot of openness, so the final audience can see the entire procedure,‘ he states. ‘They can see not just the result, but likewise the challenges that existed before we started trying to find options.‘
For him, the story requires a human scale. ‘I think we have actually ended up being quite insensitive to huge, dismal statistics,‘ he continues. ‘If you check out the variety of trees deforested, or the square miles lost to disintegration, or the millions of individuals who have moved, it becomes an abstraction.‘
The work gets force when those forces are reminded one household or one group of households. ‘Once you start putting faces and personal stories to these problems, I think the audience tends to feel more empathy.‘
farmer from the community of Tonahuixtla. image courtesy the
artist agave fibers keep the plant alive
The agave work expands this thinking through another plant and another landscape process. In the same neighborhood, Laposse has worked with agave as part of a broader reforestation strategy, planting it throughout worn down slopes where its roots help retain water and soil. Instead of collecting the entire plant for tequila, mezcal, or syrup, the fiber is taken by pruning the leaves.
‘The fibers are a great solution because you prune the plant, but you do not eliminate it,‘ he goes on. ‘That really assists it grow much healthier and much faster, and produce more leaves.‘
Those fibers end up being shaggy benches, tactile wall pieces, sculptural pets, and fur-like armchairs, with hairs that are combed and knotted by hand. In works such as Hair of the Canine, Furry Mirror, and Pink Furry Armchair, the product keeps its raw, rowdy character, someplace in between plant fiber and animal coat, while still pointing back to the fields where it was grown.
Laposse also developed The Great Shepherd with Kvadrat, a rocking bench covered in knotted sisal from agave plants cultivated as part of his ongoing land and community regeneration work in rural Mexico. The piece utilizes mechanical fastenings and prevents glue so its parts can be reused or recycled, extending the same thinking from the hillside to the object’s building and construction.