est living’s managing director, Miffy Coady with designer Elliat Rich
The Spula Stool and San Bench from SKUPA>
For SKUPA>, their Melbourne Design Week exhibition, Material Truths, was a distillation of everything the brand believes in: that furniture made honestly and with intention has the power to bring people together.
In partnership with SKUPA>
Not every exhibition asks something of you, but during Melbourne Design Week 2026, SKUPA>’s Material Truths was different and invited guests to come to the table, stay, and resolve together. Developed in collaboration with Alice Springs-based artist and designer Elliat Rich and hosted by leading Melbourne-based design practice Kennedy Nolan, it was an exhibition about presence and craft in equal measures.
SKUPA> takes its name from the Croatian word for ‘together’, and that founding idea has always shaped its approach to solid timber furniture. “We’ve always thought of furniture as the thing that holds people in relation to each other,” Luke Tošić says, who leads the brand alongside his brother Ziggy, following the passing of their father and founder Boris Tošić. “Elliat has added another layer of invitation, presence and participation to our tables. Most furniture assumes use. Ours insists on company.” Material Truths extends this thinking further, asking how honesty in making might translate into honesty in living, and how a table might create the conditions for genuine presence rather than surface spectacle.
At the centre of the installation is Finegrain, a conceptual piece designed by Elliat Rich and brought to life by SKUPA>’s Sydney workshop. A woven timber object comprising a central trivet and settings that lift out around it, Finegrain moves with the meal, opening as a table is laid, closing back on itself between sittings. It cannot make its full meaning alone, and was never intended to. For Rich, the piece draws on two ancient meanings carried by a single word. “In timber, fine grain is a mark of care—dense, slow-grown,” she says. “In food, grain is the oldest thing humans have gathered around. Finegrain sits at the meeting of both. It holds the meal. It connects the table.”
Elliat Rich reflects on Finegrain, her latest design released during Melbourne Design Week.
Brothers Luke and Ziggy Tošić of SKUPA>
Underpinning it all is SKUPA’s long-held philosophy around materiality. Solid timber, worked whole, wears in rather than out—it softens rather than deteriorates, and can be restored rather than replaced. It is, as Luke puts it, “a specification for the long term in a practice too often drawn to the short.” Kennedy Nolan’s considered studio space provided the perfect frame, consolidating what Patrick Kennedy describes as an ongoing relationship built on original ideas and exceptional craft.
What made Material Truths resonant was the alignment of values between all three collaborators. Kennedy Nolan’s Patrick Kennedy captured it well: “SKUPA combines two elements which we admire and pursue in our own practice—original ideas and great technical skill.” For Elliat Rich, whose practice is grounded in place, Country and a responsibility to both human and more-than-human worlds, the collaboration offered a natural meeting point, makers who share her belief that objects carry meaning well beyond their function.
The event was held at the studio space of Melbourne-based practice Kennedy Nolan.
