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A Partnership for Forest Value
The Forest-Origin Furniture Exhibition brings together designers, craftspeople, entrepreneurs, and organizations united by a common ambition: to create greater value for forests by creating greater value from forests.
For more than two years, these partners have been collaborating to strengthen forest livelihoods through design, craftsmanship, innovation, and market development. Working across disciplines and sectors, they share a belief that well-designed products can help create stronger economic incentives for sustainable forest management while celebrating Guyana's extraordinary natural and cultural heritage.
One important outcome of this collaboration has been the establishment of a Design and Innovation Hub, hosted by Liana Cane Furnishings in Georgetown. The Hub serves as a space where designers, artisans, manufacturers, and communities experiment with new ideas, new materials, and new methods of production. Both The Rainforest Collection, developed by Pilot Projects Collaborative, and the Native Grain Collection, developed by Locke on Wood, emerged through this collaborative environment.
Together with Liana Cane Furnishings' own celebrated collection, these works demonstrate how design can connect forests, craftsmanship, and contemporary living.
About The Designers
Pilot Projects Collaborative
Pilot Projects Collaborative is a Canadian-based, internationally active design and innovation organization working in more than twenty countries. The organization develops pilot projects, engagement programs, and built initiatives that strengthen beneficial relationships between people, cities, forests, and the natural world.
Innovation, craftsmanship, and systems design form the foundation of the organization's approach. Bringing together designers, planners, strategists, ecologists, and makers, Pilot Projects works across disciplines to develop practical, beautiful, and scalable solutions to complex environmental and social challenges.
The Rainforest Collection, led by founder Scott Francisco, explores how contemporary furniture can celebrate Guyana's remarkable forest materials while strengthening local manufacturing, forest livelihoods, and international appreciation for responsibly sourced tropical timber.
Liana Cane Furnishings
For more than three decades, Liana Cane Furnishings, under the leadership of Jocelyn Dow, has been one of Guyana's best-known furniture manufacturers and an international ambassador for Guyanese craftsmanship. The company is renowned for transforming rainforest materials—including kufa vine, nibbi, ite palm fibre, and locally sourced timber—into elegant furniture and architectural pieces that express both traditional knowledge and contemporary design.
Beyond manufacturing, Liana Cane Furnishings has long invested in developing local skills, expanding markets for Guyanese products, and demonstrating that forest-based enterprises can generate lasting economic and social value. As host of the Design and Innovation Hub, the company provides an ideal environment where new collections, techniques, and collaborations can emerge.
Locke on Wood
Locke on Wood is the studio of master craftsman Jonathan Locke, a Guyanese-born woodworker whose career spans more than three decades in fine architectural woodworking, custom furniture, and design. Based in the New York area while maintaining deep personal and creative ties to Guyana, Locke is recognized for exceptional craftsmanship, technical mastery, and an intuitive understanding of wood as both a structural and expressive material. He has created work for distinguished private clients, collaborated with leading designers and architects, and taught woodworking and design, while remaining deeply committed to sharing his knowledge with future generations.
Created especially for this exhibition, Locke's Native Grain Collection celebrates the remarkable character of Guyana's lesser-known timber species. Rather than concealing the individuality of each wood, the collection highlights the distinctive grain, colour, and figure that make every species unique, inviting visitors to discover the beauty already present within the forest itself.
Designing Value for Forests
The collaboration between these partners began through the Guyana Forest Value Creation Hubs initiative, an effort to strengthen both local and international value chains for forest products while creating stronger economic incentives for forest conservation.
Rather than viewing forests only as places of extraction, the initiative asks a different question: How can thoughtful design, skilled craftsmanship, and local manufacturing increase the value created from every responsibly harvested tree?
By transforming responsibly sourced timber and non-timber forest products into beautiful, durable furniture, more value remains within Guyana – supporting skilled employment, encouraging innovation, expanding manufacturing capacity, and helping forest communities prosper.
The resulting collections reflect this philosophy. Inspired by the graceful parabolic curves of the kufa vine, the Rainforest Collection grew from an original stool into a family of tables, chairs, and complementary pieces. The Native Grain Collection reveals the extraordinary diversity hidden within Guyana's forests through the natural beauty of its timber species. Liana Cane Furnishings' own work demonstrates decades of craftsmanship rooted in traditional rainforest materials and techniques.
Together, these collections present more than furniture. They illustrate a transparent value creation system – one that connects healthy forests, skilled craftspeople, thoughtful design, thriving communities, and the everyday spaces where people live, gather, and work.
Forest-Origin Furniture invites visitors to see not only what these objects are, but where they come from – and the forests and people whose future they can help sustain.
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