Mash T Design Studio

Mash T Design Studio

Mash.T Design Studio creates award-winning furniture, lighting and accessories that celebrate African craft. Founded by designer Thabisa Mjo, the studio brings together technology and traditional crafts to tell uniquely South African stories, using the medium of design. 

Over the years, Mash.T’s unique and contemporary design aesthetic has received coveted accolades such as “South African Designer of the Year, 2019” and “Most Beautiful Object in South Africa” for its award-winning, Tutu 2.0 Pendant Light.

Mash.T has showcased globally at exhibitions such as Milan Design Week 2019, 100% Design UK and currently has products represented at the Bonne Esperance Gallery in Paris. A passion for collaboration and supporting the local design scene also led to the studio curating “Sacrosanct”, a collective showing of South African design at Milan Design Week, 2019

Owner and founder of Mash.T Design Studio, Thabisa Mjo, is passionate about preserving traditional skills and helping other small businesses. Mjo stumbled into the industry by impulsively entering the Nando’s Hot Young Designer Talent Search competition in 2015. The challenge was to create a pendant light with a contemporary forward-thinking South African twist that could be used in any Nando’s restaurant globally.

To the designer’s delight, the Tutu 2.0 light was announced a winner, and has now been installed in restaurants across the world, from Cape Town to Malaysia, Washington and London. However, for Mjo, who had never designed anything before, the real prize was discovering that she had a gift she had never tapped into.

Mjo has subsequently designed full product ranges and won several awards, thus securing her name as one of the continent’s top design talents. Most recently, Mjo has become the first South African designer to have two of her works, the Tutu Light and Mjojo Cabinet, be installed as part of the permanent collection at Paris’ Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Museum of Decorative Arts) in the Louvre.