W hen sculpture meets structure, the fireplace is no longer background, it becomes the room’s soul. In the world of interiors, few elements carry the intimacy, nostalgia, and symbolic power of a fireplace. Yet for decades, this architectural anchor has remained restrained, linear, conventional, and quietly utilitarian. The Wabele collection, a sculptural series of fireplace surrounds designed by designer and artist Leyden Lewis in collaboration with Trueform Concrete, challenges that status quo. Unveiled at aspire Design & Home’s Art of the Home Showhouse in Upper Saddle River, NJ, Wabele isn’t merely a fireplace surround, it’s a statement. A rhythmic, biomorphic form that invites touch, inspires movement, and reframes the fireplace as both spatial and spiritual center. T H E S H A P E O F R E S O N A N C E The origin story of Wabele begins not in concrete, but in a 1920s Emery Roth–designed apartment in Brooklyn. There, Lewis began sketching a surround inspired by Art Deco elegance filtered through ancestral African geometries. The resulting forms are fluid and poetic, gestures of movement and presence. The collection takes its name from Wabele, the fire- spitter masks of the West African Senufo people, used in ritual dances to ward off harmful spirits and summon ancestral strength, a symbolic echo of the fireplace’s role as both hearth and threshold. The collection includes three signature variations, Inward, (Un)balanced, and Outward, each custom-sized and finished to order. The sculptural gestures are subtle yet commanding, expressing motion through curvature, layered depth, and delicate transitions between planes. “This is design that breathes,” says Lewis. “Even though concrete is a material of weight and permanence, we wanted these fireplace surrounds to feel like they were unfolding and anchored, but never static.” M A T E R I A L , M A D E P O E T I C The collection is produced in collaboration with Trueform Concrete, a New Jersey-based fabrication studio known for pushing the expressive boundaries of concrete. Utilizing their proprietary GFRC (glass- fiber-reinforced concrete) blend, the surrounds are structurally strong yet visually light, allowing for thinner profiles and crisp, continuous curves. Each surround is handcrafted at Trueform’s facility, formed, refined, and finished by artisans who understand the nuance of concrete as both medium and message. The result? Surfaces that shift with the light, edges that blur the line between industrial and organic, and finishes that evoke everything from carved stone to mineral-washed concrete. Wabele A New Language for the Modern Hearth L E Y D E N L E W I S X T R U E F O R M C O N C R E T E