KÚYA Magazine – July 2019

WWW.CBJAMAICA.COM 17 KÚYA

D

avid Myrie, Owner and Creative Director of Exquisite Wicker, has always wanted to be

creative. “Growing up, I wanted to find an outlet for my creativity. I thought about going

to art school, but I was talked out of it. Then one day while working and finishing school

I doodled an image of what would become my first piece of furniture [an ultra modern chaise

lounge]. I sent the ‘Post It’ to my sister who is a civil engineer and she sketched it out for me as I

couldn’t really draw. It took years before it actually got built, now there are four or five of them out

there.”

The story of Exquisite Wicker, a wicker furniture making and repair business in Kingston, began

a long time before Myrie relocated from Miami (where he had lived since he was nine) and had

any interest in designing furniture. It began when his mother Mary Ellen Dempster took over a

company she thought had potential. “My mum is a business woman. At the time she owned a

business that made modern area rugs. She had rented a space to the guys making the wicker

furniture. When the owner decided that he could no longer run it, mum took over. The company

continued to make traditional pieces and repair furniture, as it still does today,” he says.

Myrie would come back and forth to Jamaica starting in 2007 but it wasn’t until he returned in 2010

and his mother handed the company over to him that he realized what a great opportunity it could

be to express himself creatively. “I knew that this was going to be the best place to start, we already

had a factory, I had the designs. I wanted to be creative and not just make what people wanted.

In the beginning when I approached the workers with my designs they were like this is not going

to work, no way. I didn’t take no for an answer, we just got going. Now, no matter what I bring to

them, they do it. Creating these pieces has really opened their minds.”

WEAVING

HIS WAY

Wicker is making a comeback

thanks to David Myrie

By Laura Henzell

Photography by Jonathan South

“I wanted to be creative and not

just make what people wanted.”