curated by Lidewij Edelkoort with Lili Tedde & Mariola López Mariño
PROUD SOUTH CRAFT
by Lidewij Edelkoort
Craft is a direct link humans have with their ancestors and the beginning of civilisation. Everyday life would request vessels, containers, mats and blankets as well as rudimentary stools to have a minimum of household requirements. Cooking, washing, storage and sleeping were organised using functional objects from clay, wood and fibre. Other, more animistic needs necessitated totems and altars, human and animal figures as well as carpets and shrouds, introducing the idea of faith to the disciplines of making; consciously embedding spiritual energy into artefacts. When people settled to farm, they crafted paddles to navigate the rivers and forks to work the land, baskets to contain the harvest as well as masks to reveal the mental states of humankind.
Gradually, human genius started to make demands on the simplicity of form and matter and decided to trace, sculpt and paint, installing foremother energies into everyday goods, unleashing a creative path that is still evolving today, inspiring contemporary creativity.
Since prehistoric times, the Proud South cultivated craft traditions and is now at the forefront of the rebirth of handmade design, able to give shape and meaning to contemporary objects nestled in local traditions and tribal heirlooms. This emancipation generates a totally new lineage of artists and designers that are on the road to international renown, an unstoppable caravan of crafted design, a way paved with wonders of an aesthetic order. They provide a solid context of natural materials, natural dyes and natural design, inspired by organic shapes and fired finishes. Often with an innate sense of humour that animates objects and makes people smile. This irreversible revival of the culture of
Andile Dyalvane represented by Southern Guil d/ Friedman Benda photo Adriaan Louw – South Africa
Valmir photo Celso Brandão – Brazil
Porky Hefer represented by Southern Guild – South Africa
Studio Paola Sakr – Lebanon
Carl Gerges Architects – Lebanon
PROUD STONE& SKETCH
design TomaziCabral for Brasigran
photos Ruy Teixeira
– Brazil –
Granite, marble and quartzite come together in an amusing display of improvised furniture, like lost and found pieces, exhibiting the rare varieties of Brazilian stone unearthed in the four corners of the country. Tremendous colours and characteristic veins illustrate the deep relationships these earthly delights forge. Once amalgamated, these abstract suggestions of furniture inspire designers and architects to honour slabs as sketches of marvellous matter, as demonstrated by Brasigran Home, a new brand extension that uses mineral overage in a radical creative way. Experimenting and playing with the sublime residue of mountains and mines, Nicole Tomazi and Sergio Cabral were invited by art director Lili Tedde to seduce audiences into understanding that noble materials can come down from their quarry to start a career as simple chairs or tables. Freely assembled like material collages, the original couple TomaziCabral once more confirms their creative and inventive genius. Usually working with glass, metal, textile, wood and more, the stone component has added another, quite substantial element to their material archive.
Grounding their spirit through the ancient forces at work.
PROUD CURIOSITY& IRREVERANCE
It is commonly thought the South possesses the recipes for happiness and humour, elevating everyday life by creating artefacts that speak a surprising and surreal language, one of disarming animals and cheerful birds, amusing vases and constructivist filters, otherworldly abstractions and strange creatures, sporting funny faces, hands and skirts. Designers and craftspeople from diverse regions have a great time gifting the world with their witty forms and crazy characters by shaping ceramics, one of the oldest crafts on earth, citing tradition with a hilarious twist. One can almost imagine their smiles when crafting these curiosities that are so fit for our chaotic times. While China and Delft blue are sandwiched between terracotta with irreverence, breaking with historical codes of conduct, masks are baked into flasks and sometimes the object itself becomes a strange being. Surfaces are dotted and spotted as if visited by a virus, figurative motifs are hand drawn, turning the tables on tabletop designs, blowing them out of proportion. In some art, kilns and objects become one. All works are off kilter and seem to be choreographed for a daily dance with absurdity.
Claire Ellis – Australia
opposite page
Birender Kumar Yadav – India this page clockwise
Studio KO at residency Ferme K33 photo BCDF – Morocco
Micaella Alcântara (heads) Toko Marcenaria (rings) for Dpot Objeto photo Gabriel Chiarastelli – Brazil
Richard Calhabeu for Dpot Objeto photo Gabriel Chiarastelli – Brazil
Studio KO at residency Ferme K33 photo BCDF – Morocco
PROUD FLOW& RHYTM
The gifted elephant grass, which is indigenous to the Gurunsi region of Northern Ghana, possesses a stubborn rebounding character, wanting to be woven as if it is still alive, in an undulating and unruly form. Almost as if dancing. The joyful character of the 250 artisans that inhabit the village in Bolgatanga adds movement and motif to its billowing manner, crafting the signature whirling and wobbling baskets that are currently reaching out to the world. This vibrant tradition that has been sustained over twenty-five years owes its swinging principle to the trust it places in the creative talents of artisans of all ages that each create their own oscillating handwriting; in their own rhythm and with their own flow. Rendered in plain grass, the surging outer form becomes a work of art entirely in itself, let alone the myriad stripes and colour planes that define each artisan’s creative growth and generosity. The incredible arts and crafts of the abundant Baba Tree Basket Company are sustained and developed through education, marketing and the cohesion of this vast collection of highly individual baskets that communicate a jubilant wave of human genius.
Baba Tree Basket Company
Ghana
Rosana Escobar – Colombia Agnes Studio photo Victor Martínez – Guatemala
PROUD MAGNIFIED& COMPACTED
They all incorporate compact materials to obtain a substantial vision, lending a condensed identity to their designs. The consolidation of craft is a major quest for these artists from Brazil, Mexico and Lebanon respectively, each of them collaborating with extraordinary artisans to realise their succinct ideas with equal parts of poetry and perseverance. Nicole Tomazi learned the skills of crochet and embroidery from her grandmother while Sergio Cabral studied the culture of materials, leading him to design products with indigenous artisans. As TomaziCabral, they combine forces, playing together like kids, making pieces in papier mâché. Whereas Caralanga’s designs ventured from jewellery into larger, more complex accessories for the home, finding new ways of working with the hand braiding of wild cotton and culminating in integrated monumental pieces. The artist Adrian Pepe focuses on arts and crafts, seen from ecological and sociocultural perspectives and producing a highly personal subliminal body of work. According to Honduran-born Adrian, his compressed wall pieces made in wool, in addition to celebrating ancestral know-how, are a blank page where symbolism, myths and emotions come to life.
Caralarga photo Gloria Estefanía – Mexico
Adrian Pepe – Honduras/Lebanon
Adrian Pepe – Honduras/Lebanon
Adrian Pepe – Honduras/Lebanon
Adrian Pepe – Honduras/Lebanon
PROUD DIGNITY& BEAUTY
Craft as a Tool for Transformation
by Humberto Campana
When I was a child in the 1950s, I was lucky enough to grow up in a small town named Brotas, in the countryside of the state of São Paulo. It was a typical village with a church, public square, school and cinema. There was no paved road to the capital. To stave off boredom, I learned to interact with my surroundings and create my own universe. I used to make toys out of cacti, cut bamboo, build tree houses, and make pools out of rocks and terracotta in the small stream near my backyard. After film nights that my brother Fernando and I regularly attended, we tried to recreate scenes from cowboys, the circus, science fiction and Italian neorealism movies, using whatever resources we could find. People would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I would say that I wanted to be an Indigenous American. I still like being in contact with the earth and nature. I used to refuse to wear shoes to school, which made my mother very angry. Although I was born with the soul of
an artisan and an artist, as I grew up, I let this side of me lie dormant because I was immature and didn’t know how to deal with this gift. Due to pressure from my family, I ended up studying law at a prestigious university in São Paulo, but I knew I would never practice the profession. Shortly after graduating, I abandoned this career and developed my own mantra: I would create my life with my hands. I always wanted to be a sculptor, to master materials, tame them, push them to the limit.
At the invitation of a friend, I went to Bahia and settled in a city called Itabuna, forty kilometres from the coast. I collected shells from the seashore, cleaned them and made mirror frames with them. My work evolved, and sometime later, I felt the need to expand and return to São Paulo, where I continued making handmade pieces until Fernando, who was training to be an architect, arrived. He added refinement to our work, which began with iron pieces cut manually with a blowtorch, that became our first collection in the late 1980s called ‘Desconfortáveis’ (Uncomfortables). At the time, it was not obvious, but today it is clear that our Campana DNA was directly linked to handcrafting since the beginning.
We always tried to reinforce this with an attitude of valuing the positive aspects of handmade craftsmanship and materials. Living in such a large country, with so much unemployment, I see manual labour as something very
powerful to modify people’s lives. It is a tool of change for less privileged people that can offer them a place in society, especially those who do not have access to higher education and advanced technologies. In my practice, most of my ideas come from experimenting with materials. I realise that this interaction with materials takes away my anxiety, connects me with my inner self and keeps me focussed and grounded. I connect with the best of myself, with my sacred self. For me, it is a spiritual act, a true act of healing. I believe that craftsmanship has the ability to bring harmony, inner peace and reassurance. In a world where artificial intelligence is beginning to dominate the job market, threatening some professions, I would bet, albeit dissonantly, on investing to preserve these craft techniques so that they do not die.
Artisanship carries with it the uniqueness of each piece. It is an antidote to the homogenised world. It determines geography and creates regional languages and cultures. It defines identities. Handmade objects also carry the affection of those who make them, which in turn imbues the object with a soul as it becomes almost a living being. This affection is transferred to the space it occupies and the relationships of those who interact with this object. I believe that it creates a dialogue and affective memory that differs from other, industrialised objects. South America’s greatest asset is its handwork, from the ancestral knowledge of the Incas and Brazilian indigenous peoples to our history of
interbreeding with Africa, Asia and Europe. We have wealth and great diversity at our fingertips. Today, I see that Brazilian crafts have gained much more prominence in the national panorama, with the true appreciation of artisans.
I learned a lot by looking at Lina Bo Bardi’s work, for example, and her exhibitions at MASP and MAM, encountering Brazilian popular culture and scenography done with great wisdom. A foreign perspective that knew how to value what we did not value in ourselves. With very little, she created wealth and nobility. It was something that resonated a lot with me because her research and her work exemplified my inner thinking, like a clue that I was on the right path.
Handmade crafts are an ally in the issue of forced migration to large urban centres, which often occurs due to the lack of employment in small towns. It allows people to have a dignified job with purpose, instead of working in a distant strange place where they don’t feel like they belong. It also contributes to the international context, as was the case with a project we did in Italy, where our partner brought refugees to work on handmade pieces, incorporating them into the market. This does not mean that technological advances should not be considered. In my practice, we have always been open-minded to new things, from the development of materials to artificial intelligence. I believe that they can go hand in hand, in balance. I believe that AI can even increase the space
PROUD POSTER& CHILD
Trained as a graphic designer and famous as an art director, Porky Hefer decided later in life to become a vernacular architect and designer. Although his works are monumental and threedimensional, they are also like posters that punctuate space. His creative background taught him how to grab the public’s attention and tell stories about the relationships between animals and humans. His clear vision infuses his works with artistic activism, warning us with magical strength just what people and plastic are doing to the planet. His quasi-childish communication skills are present in the bold and humorous nests he makes, inspired by the intricate abodes of the social weaver birds seen along the roads of his homeland, South Africa. He invites collectors to feel safe and elevated by massive, crafted constructions and creates hermetic spaces such as amoebas and shells that hold people as close as peas in a pod, as snug as crabs in a shell. Through his oeuvre, Porky aims to reconnect us with nature as a constant reminder of the endangered species we have become. With an eco-warrior design language, his work is immersed in animal behaviour and organic forms. His sculptural pieces become playful proposals that comment on nature’s resourcefulness and interconnectedness. Humbling us all.
Porky Hefer represented by Southern Guild Gallery – South Africa –
photos Rudi Geyse r/ Southern Guild
photos Hayden Phipp s/ Southern Guid
PROUD SOURCED& FOUND
Life from Clay
by Trevyn McGowan
Twenty years of living in the Northern Hemisphere in a city of sophisticated retailers, restaurants and hotels shaped my understanding of what was beautiful. London in the 90s felt like the epicentre of cool and The Conran Shop was its chapel. The perfect edit for pretty much every item you needed to furnish a house. Home was of utmost importance to me and collecting and living with exquisite things prompted my start as an interior designer. My company, Site Specific, created environments that were as particular as their owners. Bespoke and unusual, I was constantly searching narrative objects unlike those that you could find anywhere else. I would source furniture, textiles and artefacts on trips to Johannesburg, layering oneof-a-kind, soulful pieces with slicker, contemporary works. Giant hand turned bowls, beaded seating pods, poignant scarified vessels. Pieces that felt organic but also aesthetically advanced.
A visit to South Africa in 2003 resulted in an on-the-spot purchase of a house on a dune overlooking twenty kilometres of beach and an ocean full of whales. This was Wilderness, by name and nature, and I was suddenly moving back to the country of my birth with a new husband. Leaving the heart of the city for a village with just two thousand people, to add more children to our growing brood and have a real adventure. Julian was an acclaimed
theatre designer, who’d been creating sets and costumes around the world and we both longed for a less stressful life, with a deeper purpose.
I had met intriguing and inspiring designers and makers on my sourcing trips. Now that I was living in the country, I was magnetically drawn to their studios, spending time listening to the way they thought, having the spine-tingling privilege of watching them design and make. Gregor Jenkin—at just twenty-five years old—had one of the sharpest minds I’d encountered, his steel tables used old carpentry principles and precise engineered processes with sublime results. We would sit hours with Otto Du Plessis and Charles Haupt of Bronze Age in their romantic studios where they worked with wood carving, clay sculpting, bronze pouring and brass engraving to execute their world of fantastical objects.
Just before leaving, as we packed up the industrial building we had converted into a family home and offices, we invited Polly Dickens, then creative director of The Conran Shop, to view a container of pieces I had imported for some of my residential projects. I had five minutes in the foyer of the head office to convince her to come, but within fifteen minutes of her visit we had planned a magical project that would take a year and thirty-six maker brands from Southern Africa to realise. A selling exhibition was
born, along with one of the most inspiring friendships I’ve ever had. Polly is fierce and absolutely exacting. She is also funny and visionary. I cut my teeth on this new business of sourcing, learning from one of the best. This first exhibition led to Conran Shops in London, Paris, New York and Tokyo stocking products across countless categories sourced in Africa by us—baskets and textiles, lighting and furniture, wirework, beadwork and paper mâché, glassware and of course, ceramics. Clay is one of the first mediums of expression for historical humankind, especially in Africa, and it remains a vital and catalytic medium in our craft industry.
Polly introduced me to the team at Anthropologie, and my new company Source was thrown in at the deep end. The rigours of supplying the American retail market for the artisanal studios was terrifying but the entire process was stewarded by the incredible vision and passion of Jim Brett. Jim was head of home at Anthropologie, went on to lead Urban Outfitters and then revolutionised West Elm. He fell as in love with the artisans as I had and over the next ten years, we worked to showcase hundreds of designers and makers through sourced product and design under license programmes. The volumes were a game changer for many companies, the transition into more streamlined supply chain processes
AFRICA HAS ALWAYS HAD A FLUID UNDERSTANDING OF ART AND DESIGN, WHICH HAS BEEN KEPT QUITE DISTINCT IN THE WEST, BUT HERE, RITUALISTIC AND EVERYDAY FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS HAVE SIMULTANEOUSLY BEEN
MODES OF EXPRESSION; ARTWORKS WHILE BEING USEFUL.
facilitated the growth of the industry. Handmade, limited-edition, bespoke work produced with traditional skills by respected artisans and crafters, projects that supported upliftment and social change, unusual forms, materials and pattern, were all now being sought rather than massproduced, soulless pieces.
The response around the world was electrifying, proof that wanting to live with more empathy and authenticity was an innate, universal impulse. We were at the groundswell of a new movement in African design—so much creative energy was coming out of the continent. People were reinventing traditional craft and making work that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. We were finding our footing within the global landscape, looking to our own traditions, visual identity, natural landscape and ideas for inspiration. This confidence and sense of community fuelled a strong visual aesthetic. Africa has always had a fluid understanding of art and design, which has been kept quite distinct in the West. But here, ritualistic and everyday functional objects have simultaneously been modes of expression; artworks while being useful.
In 2008 we saw the need for a platform to provoke new work at the very top end and showcase it collectively, so we invited the country’s leading designers to make their wildest and most ambitious
work. This helped shape a collectible design category as we worked with the best designers, those that had been our inspiration from the outset–Porky Hefer, Andile Dyalvane, Dokter and Misses, Adam Birch, Zizipho Poswa, all of whom we continue to represent today.
Southern Guild Gallery was born, and we exhibited for the first time at Design Miami in 2011 with a solo show by Gregor Jenkin. The gallery evolved rapidly and now has large spaces on the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town and East Hollywood in Los Angeles. Our artists’ work has been acquired by leading museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, LACMA, Vitra, National Gallery of Victoria, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago and many more, and we continue to insist that the line is blurred between the categories of art and design as this is intrinsically African.
Southern Guild is a platform for human stories and hands-on making in painting, ceramics, sculpture, photography, installation work and assemblage art, informed by our first relationships with objects and materials and what they say about us, and how we shape and treat the world around us. With all eyes on the growing influence of the African continent, there’s even more impetus to explore primal impulses from the birthplace of humankind.
PROUD BREAD& BEADING
photos Ruy Teixeira – South Africa –
The happy colours of striped and spotted animals emanate a rainbow of light through their tiny glass beads. Beading is an ancient African craft that dates back two thousand years when glass was first traded. The miniature beads would be used in rituals and to decorate braids, finish fabrics and envelop objects. They have nowadays become amazing artefacts in themselves, comprising a Noah’s Ark of animal species rendered in different ways and using various sizes. From monumental elephants to majestic lions, statuesque giraffes, unruly porcupines, wobbling ostriches and hirsute warthogs. Original works of craft made in the townships of Cape Town, engaging the empowerment of female folk artists, the guardians of traditional motifs and techniques that directly relate to their ancestors, passed down for centuries by grandmothers and mothers. The art of beading is a way of life, crafting imagined objects while cooking, cleaning and baking bread for the children, lifting the spirit with a great sense of achievement. The renowned MonkeyBiz collective has thus enabled positive change in local communities and its contemporary culture has travelled the world, narrating the wonders of wildlife and human nature.
MonkeyBiz
PROUD PLUMP& CURVED
As a child, Humberto da Mata must have been impressed by his city Brasilia, the modern capital of Brazil, famous for the rotund architecture of Oscar Niemeyer. Humberto’s career as a designer has seen him gradually become more fluid, introducing movement to his aesthetic, remembering the amoebic language of Brasilia. First in ceramics and then amplified in bolder papier mâché pieces like lamps, mirrors and stools, Humberto has been adding volume with a tubby texture, sculpting a naïve and plump idiom. The use of paper as a craft material was the result of scarcity during the pandemic and liberated his discipline to its simple yet ecological core. Formed as a young designer at Estúdio Campana in São Paulo, he learned early on about the joy of making texture, textiles and recycling, and his love for these humble expressive materials has become part of his multilayered language, producing furniture finished with hand-stitched upholstery. This was followed by the crafting of mouldable shapes with his own hands, in his own studio, incorporating glazed ceramics and kaolincoated paper. “The hand modelling that I use – a mixture of coiling and slabs – drove me to the development of organic form,” he says.
Humberto da Mata
photos Bruna Bento – Brazil –
PROUD UNTAMED& SATURATED
NEW MEXICAN EXPRESSIONISM
Mexico is becoming the epicentre of craft-infused design, inspiring young sprouts to research art history, ancient technologies and indigenous cultures. A new wave of Mexicanism is a vibrant testament to the merging of traditions where manifold influences converge to create something entirely new and fascinating. Every design object is wild and inspired, with forgotten ways of sculpting woods and weaving grasses. Two major designers are spearheading the movement of Mexican Expressionism, immersed in citations from Aztec culture to Baragan’s colours to Frida’s faith in folklore. With their open workshops and concept stores, they each explore and exhibit the rebirth of saturated and untamed crafted design.
“Behind every object we produce lies a creative symbiosis with the artisans we work with. We carefully nurture a working relationship with each craftsman, understanding their unique talents and living their traditions, together we create the Mestiz language,” says founder Daniel Valero. Whereas for Andrés Gutiérrez and his design studio, each residential concept is born and enriched by the highly personal histories of
