Tejumola Butler Adenuga doesn’t sign most of his work. Not because he’s shy about authorship or chasing anonymity, but because he doesn’t feel the need. “Even with the furniture, it’s like, I just don’t need to see it. I just know that it’s me,” he tells me. The idea that someone could see a piece and just know who made it. It’s not about plastering a name over everything, it’s about developing such a strong language that authorship is undeniable.
That word 'language' comes up a lot when we talk. For Tejumola, it’s not about medium or category, it’s about principles. “There’s an honesty in what you see. Like a line is a line. If the line is off, you’ll be able to tell. There’s no way to cover it up.” It’s the same with his aluminium works. If something is slightly bent or off balance, the piece reveals it immediately. No illusions, no disguises. Just work that demands to stand on its own truth.
But let’s rewind a little. Like most artists, Tejumola didn’t start with aluminium benches in Lagos or commissions with Netflix. He started with comics. “I’ve always had an interest in comics… it just kind of evolved into me looking at all those things and being like, wait, can I try and replicate some of this?” He could. And he did. Copying turned into a design practice. Pointillism became his entry point, but the work kept shifting and expanding until it landed somewhere more fluid; multidisciplinary, if you need a label.
Still, the leap from sketchbooks to sculpture-like aluminium furniture is no small one. So how did it happen? Not by carefully pitching himself or chasing down opportunities. “For some reason, I’ve never been able to find opportunities by reaching out, it never works for me. I just have to do the best I can and then pray and hope that the right person sees it.”
And they did. Netflix emailed him for a Top Boy project. Soho House came calling. The New York Times featured his work. “It’s always been like, I make an investment, I do self-actualised projects, and then several things spring off from that.” When he launched his first furniture collection, funded almost entirely out of his own pocket, it was so expensive he jokes that “you could put a mortgage down for it.” But that risk attracted more opportunities: exhibitions, commissions, even a new show with one of the most prestigious design institutions in the world.
The choice of aluminium isn’t random either. “It’s a material I’ve always loved, I’ve always admired. Just the fact that it’s infinitely recyclable without losing its mass… it’s lightweight, but also really strong compared to other metals.” Beyond its physical properties, there’s cultural resonance too. His mum received uncast aluminium pots as a wedding gift, his grandfather was a blacksmith. “So like, I’ve always had a relationship with aluminium. Metals are part of my DNA, so to speak.”
There’s also sustainability built into his practice. Tejumola grew up in Nigeria, where nothing went to waste. “You go into any Nigerian household, you look under the sink, there is a bag full of other bags. The ice cream tub turns into a stew tub. We don’t throw anything away. Like, what’s recycling? We recycle in-house until the material is so depleted that you’re like, okay, cool, fine, now we need to actually throw this away.” His minimalism is cultural, practical, almost instinctual: cut the excess, focus on what’s necessary.
That ethos is stitched into his design philosophy. Furniture has to be functional, not just beautiful. “If you make something that no one can sit on, something that’s not comfortable, then it becomes a bit of a waste". Permanence matters too. Part of that stems from a near-death experience years ago that birthed a need for a legacy. “I need to make things that are a little bit more challenging, so that I live my days like, you know what, if I die tonight, I’ve done enough. I’ve left enough behind.”
Before that moment, his work lived mostly in 2D. Flat, easily stored, easily forgotten. But furniture became something more: proof of existence. “These pieces are monuments. It’s like: I have lived. I was here.” And because they’re built from aluminium, they resist disposability. “It’s not like a piece from Ikea, you know? With aluminium, because of the scale and the weight and the brilliance of the material, it’s always impressive, whether big or small. No one’s ever going to just discard it like that.” Instead, his works are destined to be cherished, moved carefully, passed down, or recycled into something else entirely whether a Coke can, maybe an aircraft part. Either way, they live on.
That duality between permanence and accessibility is what makes Tejumola’s practice so distinct. On one hand, he’s building heirlooms. On the other, he’s just as happy putting his drawings on t-shirts or Crocs. When asked how he ensures his work is made accessible he shares, “somebody living in a flat share in Oxford isn’t going to buy a framed print. But they’ll happily wear a t-shirt. Because that’s a way of them showing their taste.” He laughs when he tells me about the Crocs collab: a custom printing machine at the pop-up meant anyone could walk in, choose a design, and leave wearing his art. “That is amazing,” I tell him. “so doing things like that, that makes things a little bit more accessible.”
And accessibility doesn’t dilute the vision. If anything, it makes it stronger. Public benches let anyone interact with his designs. An affordable Crocs drop lets a teenager own a piece of his language. Meanwhile, the luxury world continues to call: Soho Home, Montblanc, the British Fashion Council. When I ask how he’s managed to position himself so firmly in that space, he shrugs. “I would love to say that I had this plan. But I think it’s maybe a taste thing. People that work in that space, I have a similar taste to them. So inevitably, they’re attracted to the things I do.”
That balance between luxury and everyday, permanence and accessibility, is what makes his work feel both monumental and personal. He’s not trying to make the most extravagant thing in the room. He’s making something honest. And when he offers advice to younger creatives, it’s equally grounded: “I think it’s very important that you try and have your thing; something that’s yours, not derived from somebody else. Once you have that, then I don’t think you can lose really.”
So maybe that’s the real permanence Tejumola Butler Adenuga is chasing. Not just aluminium sculptures or timeless furniture, but a language of making that can’t be replicated or discarded. Something that insists: I was here.