Built From Memory: The Design World of Teclit Sebhatu

Some stories don’t start in studios or galleries. They start in quiet villages. In the hush of early mornings with no electricity. In the way your father ties a rope or fixes a broken tool like it’s second nature. In the coffee-scented air of a home where design isn’t a profession—it’s a necessity.

Teclit Sebhatu didn’t grow up surrounded by objects of design. But he was surrounded by people who knew how to make things work. His father could repair almost anything. “He wasn’t educated,” Teclit tells me, “but he was incredibly smart. I watched him problem-solve constantly, and that shaped the way I see the world.”

His mother, on the other hand, gave him belief. The kind that roots deep. “She used to say, ‘If others can do it, why not you?’ That stuck with me.”

Now living in the UK, Teclit is the kind of creator who doesn’t just invent things—he questions everything. The shapes we use. The tools we reach for. The systems we think are unchangeable. He’s not here for hype or scale. He’s here for accuracy. For authorship. For memory.

His design brand, ZOWDI—which means crown in Tigrinya—isn’t just a company. It’s a return. A soft-spoken rebellion against erasure. A way of saying, “We’ve always been here. You just stopped looking.”

A Glimpse Of ZOWDI By Teclit Sebhatu; Image Source: Teclit Sebhatu

Take coffee, for instance. A global industry. A ritual. A symbol. And yet, somehow, East Africa—its origin—gets left out of the design conversation.

“We taught the world how to drink coffee,” he says. “But now, when you look at the tools used to prepare it, none of them reflect us.”

So he’s designing a collection of coffee tools that do. Not for aesthetic alone, but for functionality. For presence. For a sense of narrative that actually belongs to the people who started it.

More specifically, he’s building around Bun—or Bunna—the traditional coffee ceremony that is sacred in the Eritrean and Ethiopian households he grew up seeing. The scent of roasted beans, the rhythm of preparation, the stillness it demands—it’s more than habit. It’s how community happens. How time slows down. How generations pass stories across a single cup.

“Bun is how we host. How we honor,” he says. “It’s where we sit, talk, and reflect. It’s culture in motion.” His designs don’t just recreate the ceremony—they hold the memory of it.

And that’s how he thinks. Everything has meaning. Everything traces back.

“I invented the world’s first square cutter,” he says, almost casually. “It’s about breaking form. Why must cutters always be round?” He’s also designed a chainless hydraulic bike. Filed patents alone. Protected ideas with nothing but intuition and legal research. All because he believed they needed to exist.

Teclit’s Trade Tool Of The Year for 2017’s Electrical Industry Awards; Image Source: Teclit Sebhatu

Still, he doesn’t really call himself an inventor. That word feels a little too shiny, a little too far from the dirt floors and problem-solving he grew up with. He calls himself a listener. A questioner. A builder of things that carry memory.

When he talks about design, he uses metaphors that land softly and stick. He compares cultural design to food. “People eat the same food with different tools—chopsticks, forks, hands. It’s not just about eating. It’s about identity.”

His tools—whether for coffee or cycling or cutting—don’t shout. They don’t need to. They carry quiet intelligence. They ask, Who are we making this for? And what does it say when we pretend certain people were never part of the story?

I ask what project he’s most proud of. He pauses.

“The coffee tools,” he says finally. “They’re personal. They’re about origin. About giving people something that feels like home.”

There’s no ego in his answer. Just care. You get the feeling he’d make these things even if no one ever saw them.

He grew up making toys out of wires and wood. Not because it was charming. Because it was the only option. That ingenuity, born from scarcity, became a language. One that now guides everything he creates.

And it’s not just about reclaiming space—it’s about redefining what design can look like when it starts from love instead of trends.

Teclit Sebhatu In The News; Video Source: BBC Via Teclit Sebhatu

Teclit’s not out to disrupt anything. He’s just here to remind us that design has always lived in places we’ve overlooked. That innovation doesn’t always look like minimalism and moodboards. Sometimes, it looks like a father with no formal education but the sharpest mechanical mind in the village. Sometimes, it looks like a mother who planted the seed of belief so deeply, it carried her son across continents.

Sometimes, it looks like a soft-spoken man in the UK quietly reimagining what the world forgot to see in the first place.

And maybe that’s what makes it radical.

Stay tuned!