Shown in Paris, then brought home to Manila FAME, genteelhome’s Bigkis collection ties four Southeast Asian designers to the Filipino artisans who gave their ideas form.
Words Gerie Marie Consolacion
Photos courtesy of Brand It
November 9, 2026
Some collections are made to be admired from a distance. Bigkis asks you to step closer.
At Manila FAME, genteelhome’s Bigkis collection invited visitors to move among pieces shaped by five design voices, then to look again at the hands that made them.
Having first been presented at Maison&Objet in Paris in 2025, the collection returned to Manila, and the mood of the homecoming was less about display than about recognition. The people whose craft built the work could finally stand in front of it with their own community.
A word that means “bond”
Bigkis is the Filipino word for ties or bonds, and the name works on every level of the collection. It describes the relationships between people, places, and creative traditions, and it describes the way a single furniture line can hold several design languages without flattening any of them.
(L-R) Eggarat Wongcharit, Keat Ong, Alessandro Trinidad, Katrina Blanca De Leon, and Gian Daus
The lineup reads like a map of the region. Eggarat Wongcharit represents Thailand; Keat Ong comes from Singapore; Dr. Lai Siew Hong brings a Malaysian perspective; and Ivy Almario speaks for the Philippines. genteelhome adds a design of its own, tying the others together.
Walk the collection with that in mind and you begin to read it as a conversation: four designers, one atelier, and a shared vocabulary of wood, fiber, metal, and glass.
The hands in the middle
What connects every piece is not a style but a workshop. genteelhome’s Filipino artisans worked closely with each designer, pairing their command of materials with the techniques needed to reach each piece’s intended form and finish. A designer’s sketch carries an idea; the artisan carries it across the gap into something you can sit on, rest a hand against, or set a glass upon.
The designers are generous about that gap. “Filipino artisans bring sensitivity to materials that gives a design its own life,” says Wongcharit. Ong puts it as, “Craftsmanship helps an idea develop further.” Meanwhile, Lai points to the quality of attention behind the work. “The care in the making allows the character of each material to come through.”
And Almario, the Filipino voice among them, reflects, “Working with our Filipino artisans reminds us how much knowledge and creativity live in our craft traditions.”
Taken together, the four comments say the same thing from different angles. The pieces are not Filipino-made versions of foreign designs. They are the result of an exchange, where the idea and the making shape each other.
Why bringing it home mattered
For Katrina Blanca De Leon, CEO and Creative Principal of genteelhome, the Manila FAME presentation was about the audience as much as the exhibition.
genteelhome at Manila FAME
“Bringing Bigkis home allows us to share the collection with the community whose craftsmanship helped shape it,” she says. “We wanted Filipino audiences to experience these collaborations firsthand and see how our artisans translate different design perspectives into pieces with character and meaning.”
The presentation placed the artisans at the heart of the story, and that is the quiet argument of the whole project. Regional design ideas travel easily. Making them real takes skill that is rooted in a place, and Bigkis puts that skill forward as the main event. As De Leon puts it, the presentation ‘celebrates their work and opens new conversations about what we can create together.’
The next pair of hands
The spirit of collaboration does not stop at the edge of the collection. genteelhome’s Young Designers’ Competition extends it to students, who are invited to explore furniture making with the guidance of experienced artisans, so that new ideas meet the skills needed to bring them to life.
The stakes are real. The selected winner becomes a design partner of genteelhome, develops furniture alongside the atelier, and receives a commission for every purchase of their design. The submission deadline has been extended to November 15, 2026, and entries go through the official submission form.
