Time picks Pinoy designer

Don’t be surprised that Brangelina are rocking little Shiloh to sleep in a bed designed by a Filipino and manufactured in Cebu.

TIME’s Global Adviser, in the magazine’s July 24 issue, featured Cebu-based designer Kenneth Cobonpue’s award-winning pieces, including the Voyager bed, which Brad Pitt recently purchased. Pitt also picked up his Pigalle and Croissant chairs.

The 37-year-old Cobonpue does wonders with rattan; TIME calls him rattan’s "first great virtuoso." Using the vine’s skin for weaving and binding and its core as structure, Cobonpue creates sensuous forms that are at once warm and sexy, light and airy yet unbelievably strong. Since his first rattan-based design, the Yin and Yang chair, seven years ago, Cobonpue has developed a strong following in the highly competitive world of A-list home furnishings.

The multi-awarded Cobonpue — most recent was the coveted 2005 Design for Asia Award — continued exploring and expanding the possibilities of the lowly rattan that his mother began in the 1970s. Designer Betty Cobonpue first took rattan beyond tacky lanai furniture by bending it into drape-like folds to mimic fabric. After training and working in New York and Germany, he came back and took over the reins of the family’s furniture business.

Cobonpue’s pieces are promoted under his definitely Asian-sounding name, which has gained a certain cachet in the high-end furnishings market.

"I’m trying to build a brand," he says. "I want Filipino designers to get known."

Difficult as his name may be for Americans and Europeans to pronounce, they’re getting used to it. Warner Brothers has asked him to do a casino set for the forthcoming movie "Ocean’s Thirteen." The trendy New York restaurant Nobu made a sizeable order of custom-built furniture. Distributors and specialty stores have kept workers at their factory in Cebu running multiple shifts.

His designs have appeared several times in the prestigious International Design Yearbook, as well as in all the major design and furnishings publications worldwide. — Doreen G. Yu