Where do influences come from? Where do movements begin? Can it be that the universe is like a kaleidoscope, constantly shuffling disparate elements into novel patterns, bringing into focus, or maybe even consciousness, fresh connections and new ideas? Consider the current design craze for Africa. Last spring, it was everywhere to be seen on the runways of New York and Paris. But nowhere was its influence more vivid or profound than in the furniture on display during Milan’s Salone Internazionale del Mobile at the showroom of Moroso, one of Italy’s most technically adventurous design manufacturers.

Called "M’Afrique," the exhibition was produced by Patrizia Moroso, the company’s exuberant creative director, and Stephen Burks, the globe-trotting African-American industrial designer, as a stunning, synergistic paean to the creative energy and rich diversity of the mother continent. Installations by the contemporary African artists Soly Cissé and Fathi Hassan and the photographer Boubacar Touré Mandemory were displayed with photographs of African cities taken by the London-based Ghanaian architect David Adjaye, alongside vibrantly colored furnishings by Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck, Philippe Bestenheider, Tord Boontje, Patricia Urquiola, and Burks. Some of the furniture was formed out of steel tubes by Senegalese craftsmen and then woven with colorful plastic threads, using a technique employed by local fishermen to make their nets. Other signature Moroso pieces were custom-upholstered in brashly patterned African fabrics.

To attribute this passion for things African to the presidency of Barack Obama, as some have done, would be simplistic — and wrong. This fascination was developing long before the Kenyan-American senator from Illinois became a presidential front-runner. If anything, Obama’s ascendancy may be yet another result of that turn in the cosmic kaleidoscope’s lens. As Patrizia Moroso explains, her motivation for creating "M’Afrique" came from a personal connection. "My husband is from Senegal, so I go every year," she says. During her trips, she could not help but become intrigued by the country’s artisanal potential. "In Africa, there is this kind of craftsmanship that is wonderful, fantastic . . . that has soul." But it was when she saw the compelling and surprisingly buoyant visions of the continent and its people depicted by contemporary native artists at the Dak’Art Biennale in the spring of 2008 that Moroso decided it was time to do something about Africa in Italy. "You have to look at art, to understand life and our world," Moroso observes.

Italy’s age-old links with the continent are colonial and stubbornly racist — a dark edge to the national character evinced in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s unabashed, insistent gibes that Barack Obama is "young, handsome, and suntanned."

"Italy is a little bit closed to the world, and especially to Africa," says Moroso. "Every day there is bad news about people immigrating and being rejected. Of course, Africa has many problems, but you can sustain the good countries where there is a good economy, like Senegal, where people live in peace."

On that fateful trip to Dakar in the spring of 2008 Moroso was accompanied by Tord Boontje, a frequent collaborator. In recent years, the Dutch designer has worked successfully with craftspeople in South America on products for Artecnica, the Los Angeles-based design company, and he soon saw potential in the inexpensive steel frames that the locals outfit with fishing nets to use as seating. Employing these materials and workers, he made prototypes for "Shadowy," a series of scrolled-back outdoor seats, which in turn served as the germ for the M’Afrique collection.

Moroso notes that the artisans, who were used to producing "very simple, normal objects," initially found it difficult to visualize Boontje’s whimsical designs. "Now," she says, "they are so proud to produce — wow! — beautiful things. For them, it’s personal growth. It’s gratifying. So that’s the design part, that’s our thing."