Rio Kobayashi

Rio Kobayashi is a London-based maker and designer, uniting creativity in thinking with excellence in hand-crafts. Rio was born and grew up in the Tochigi Prefecture of Japan in a ceramic artisan family, creating his first piece of furniture at six years old. At eighteen he left Japan for Austria, where he developed and honed his skills in carpentry over the course of a three-year apprenticeship in cabinet making.

From 2011 on he gathered further creative experience; working with international studios and artists in Berlin, Milan, Tokyo and Paris. In 2017 Kobayashi set up his own workshop in East London. He has since exhibited under his own name at London Design Festival, Milan Design week and at Mint gallery. His work has been featured in Dezeen, Domus, H.O.M.E. Magazine and Interior Magazine Taiwan.

His work is broad in its scope, but precise in its execution; creating pieces which open playful dialogues between the traditional crafts of his native Japan and the boundary-less creative freedoms of the modern design world he inhabits.