CAROLYN METCALFE OF IBIS GALLERY
Ibis Gallery is well known to anyone who lives or has visited Montagu in the past 9 years. But, the story goes back to a young mother who raised her two sons by playing the piano in the theatre and teaching music. The values Carolyn's paternal grandmother passed down to her son, Thomas Dowdeswell McSweeny, were of hard work and the desire to learn. He served his apprenticeship at the Post Office, which in the early twenties also ran the telephone department. While digging a ditch to lay cable in Jeppe Street in Johannesburg during the miners' strike in 1922, he and his fellow workers had to take shelter from the crossfire. Having gained his first ticket as an electrical engineer, Thomas moved to Western Area in the old Transvaal, to work on the mines. He continued to study, gaining his ticket in five disciplines being electrical, mechanical, diesel, civil and steam, making him sought after as an engineer. With a wife and two young babies, he took a job as the Electrical Engineer in Barkly East and was headhunted by Evie Basson the Montagu Mayor, to take over the Electrical Engineering post. Thomas McSweeny's skills were well used in Montagu. From the building of the original dam in the south, to supply the town with reliable water from various natural sources, the building of roads, and the design and oversight of the Montagu hospital extension, where Carolyn McSweeny was born in 1948. Carolyn, the second youngest of eight siblings, (four of her sisters still live in town) shares her early memories of her life in Montagu, noting that the family lived in Hospital Street - in the South of Montagu, where at the time there were very few homes. The children all walked to school. The kindergarten is now the pre-primary school at the corner of Joubert and Blom Street. The Primary School was across the road, where the Municipal offices are housed today, and the High School was at the top of Blom Street, sadly it was torn down. While Carolyn's home language was English, she very quickly learned Afrikaans and was fortunate in having Miss Rae Wessels as her first teacher, who made a lasting impression on her. Each day, her teacher would produce beautiful drawings on the blackboard that she used as a teaching aid, often depicting scriptures from the Bible. Reading and studying of the Bible was taught at all levels of school at the time, giving Carolyn a thorough knowledge of the scriptures. Life and schooling were full of happy memories other than her final year in primary school, when a teacher, who enjoyed tormenting children under the guise of being a strict teacher - eventually made Carolyn's life a misery. The final straw came when her father found her writing out 2000 lines at 2.30 in the morning, tired and miserable, she still had another five or six hundred to do. This punishment was for a small misdemeanor. The following day he took her out of school and sent her to the little school in the Keisie Valley.
One of the teachers who lived in Montagu traveled to the school along with a couple of other children who had also suffered at the hands of this particular teacher. Sadly, the teacher who was providing the lift to school suffered a heart attack, so Carolyn bordered on one of the farms to finish her primary schooling. The Montagu High School built in 1960, was where Carolyn spent her last five years of education. Looking back she regrets being lazy and choosing the easy subjects, and not taking maths and science. Carolyn's tertiary education was completed at the School of Art in Johannesburg, where her chosen subject was sculpture. However, the department was in disarray so she swapped to ceramics. Once qualified, she took a job with the Parks Department of Johannesburg at one of the Recreation Centres in South Hills. Here she taught art classes to the school kids and worked with the elderly in the afternoons. A job she hated, but it allowed her to save up and buy a boat ticket to London. Like most young South Africans in the early '70s who went to London, you were dirt poor and took whatever job you could to stay afloat. A chance meeting led her to a dilapidated place in Islington, a shop selling pottery supplies, they had a kiln in the basement. Here Carolyn formed an informal partnership with the owner and started making dolls. Two years later, still eking out a living, it turned out the guy who owned the business found himself in a position to buy a riverboat and promptly put her on hourly paid wages. The business folded within three months. Having gained experience and skills, Carolyn branched out on her own and specialised in making, dolls, dollhouse china and doll families. These were sold to shops such as Habitat, the Dolls House and iTridias! The income allowed her to travel around Europe and the UK. Strangely, it was the '76 riots in South Africa which were all over the international news that made Carolyn homesick. She gave up traveling and started saving to reverse the process to come back home, with some cash in hand. Back in South Africa, Carolyn joined forces with her sister Jenny. Jenny and her husband Naas Ferreira lived in HalfWay House at the time. The plot offered a covered area that the two girls set up, to make limited edition doll kits. Carolyn used her UK savings to purchase a kiln. Initially, it was a very slow start. Timothy Falkiner, Carolyn and Jenny's other sister Macushla's husband, took on the marketing. Over the next ten years, sewing groups up and down the country eagerly awaited the next edition of dolls. Each series consisted of 300 dolls, each doll was signed and dated. The dolls were sold under the name Bartholomina Dolls. Carolyn's daughter is currently in the process of setting up the website under the name of Bartholomina Dolls, she bought the domain some 20 years ago. There is still a steady flow of enquiries about the dolls. The advent of marriage and her own family instantly saw Carolyn lose interest in making dolls. Concerned about the environment in which her children were being raised, she and
her husband decided to relocate to Montagu some thirty years ago, where they started a silk screening and printing business. What drew Carolyn back to Montagu was the community, it had always been tolerant, safe and caring. The community was a fairly mixed bag of people. There was little ill-feeling between the English and Afrikaans and Coloured communities. Her father and the local Domani sometimes chatted over a brandy. She wanted her three children to grow up free of the restraints of city life.
She remembers a gay couple who lived openly in Badshoogte in the '60s. They came to town in their white open-topped sports car with red upholstery along with the poodle leaning out the window. While there was lots of gossip and winking when they were seen, the community embraced them and the couple took part in local concerts and plays with good grace. Local gossip had it that the older of the couple, a Royal Naval Officer, was possibly a royal blow by! (The illegitimate offspring of some British Royal) This rumour was more than likely caused by his considerable monthly income. The other partner, much younger, and delightfully camp, ran an antique shop in town that was well-loved by the locals. After the business closed her husband joined an advertising agency in Cape Town and traveled home for weekends. Carolyn went back throwing pottery, making Maiolica earthenware, a decorative technique, using bright pigments applied onto the raw white glaze before firing it, to fuse colour and glaze, this technique predates the renaissance. Beautiful examples of this technique can be found in Italy where it originated.
Initially, her pottery was displayed on the stoep, but nine years ago, Hennie Kok, who makes beautiful handcrafted wood furniture, joined forces with Carolyn. Part of the house, on the corner of Barry and Bath Street, was converted into a gallery, where Hennies furniture is displayed and Carolyn's paintings and portraits adorn the walls. Her stunning signature earthenware is also displayed, this ranges from smaller items to large bowls, of which she only produces eight a year, for those fortunate enough to obtain one of these beautiful items. The gallery is a well-known landmark in Montagu, and has hosted many events over the years showing the work of artists known and unknown. However, in Montagu, Carolyn is possibly as recognised and respected as an artist and potter as she is known for her care of the many birds which live across the road from her. Many a baby Ibis owes its life to her love and care. Where to from here with the COVID-19 lockdown? Carolyn believes it's time to think out of the box, to make things happen differently.