Tell
the
Gumboot dancers jive in one of
So Kiff’s dancer ranges.
Design Kist
uses Joburg’s
distinctive skyline
in its fabrics.
of our society
Deliciously Daft
South Africa’s textile designers
are drawing inspiration from
Africa’s animals, street life and
gumboot dancers.
Wonderboy’s Words
His mates in the Ardmore ceramics workshop in
the KZN Midlands simply called him ‘Wonder’.
Whatever you called Wonderboy Nxumalo, the
little guy with a big heart was a fabulous example
of how far you can take your talents. As he once
said: ‘My mother finds the answer now to why she
gave me the name Wonderboy.’
His mother was a domestic worker in a KwaZuluNatal town, a world away from the international
galleries and auction houses where art lovers now
pay thousands for the works that won Fée Halsted
and Bonnie Ntshalintshali the 1990 Standard Bank
Young Artist of the Year Award. They first started
producing Ardmore’s unique, colourful plates, jugs
and bowls decorated with exuberant animal figures
in 1985.
American Coca-Cola heiress Susan Mathis
collects Ardmore. She has several hundred pieces.
Buckingham Palace and the White House have
Ardmore masterpieces too. The Ardmore team of
skilled artists is one of South Africa’s big success
stories, and for 14 years its star was Wonderboy.
What made his artworks different were the
messages he put next to his pictures, painted or
etched into the glaze. They communicated a simple
but inspirational view of life and the world. It
might be in the form of a prayer, like the words he
wrote on a plate bought by a priest in America:
‘O God, please let our leaders not be greedy and
take everything for themselves. God has created
this world to be ruled by good people who would
share everything. Remember the rotten potato
can kill the whole bag, like Zimbabwe…’ Or
a declaration about love: ‘Remember true love is
the one never failed, never broken, never sleep,
never bring you tears, never keep your face
unhappy. Smile is only needed between two
people in love, as they loving together.’
Top: Ardmore’s
It’s four years since Wonderboy died
quirky animals.
of an HIV-related illness, as have so many Right: The new fabric
of Ardmore’s artists, all remembered on
range, inspired by
the gallery’s walls in portraits on plates. Wonderboy Nxumalo’s
Now Wonderboy’s most moving lines
moving words.
have been reproduced in Ardmore’s
Below: Wonderboy
new fabric range on a signature piece
Nxumalo.
dedicated to him, some of whose profits
will go to his mother. Printed on closely
woven pure linen in a variety of
designs, the entire range is as heartlifting as the ceramics that inspired it.
Among the immediately recognisable
images are Jabu Nene’s hippo flowers
and Octavia Buthelezi’s frogs’
eggs motifs.
It’s a family project. Fée’s son
Jonathan, who heads Ardmore
Design, co-ordinated and
developed the range with
Fée’s sister-in-law Marguerite
Macdonald Mavros, who founded
one of SA’s top fabric houses,
Mavromac. Fée and Marguerite
worked on the designs with
two graphic designers, Fée’s
daughter Catherine and Diana
Chavarro. ‘This fabric is
close to all our hearts,’ says
Marguerite. ‘I think it really
tells the Ardmore story.’
• www.ardmoreceramics.co.za
Photographs gallo images/istock photos, supplied
by hilary prendini toffoli
Design Kist was started by Cape Technikon-trained
textile designer Kristen Morkel and her engineer
husband John as an online textile design studio
selling downloadable digital surface patterns. ‘We
are now printing our patterns onto fabrics and
wallpapers,’ says Kirsten. ‘Our Zoo Biscuit fabric and
wallpaper is a favourite and our Marmite print is also
popular. It seems nostalgic designs linked to food
have winning appeal.’
They use a combination of hand-drawn illustration
and computer-aided design to create their surface
patterns and then print the fabrics using both
silkscreen and digital printing at their studio
in Gardens, Cape Town. Their Mzansi-inspired
ranges include Muizenberg Huts, Transkei Cows
and Egoli Skyline.
• designkist.com
SimplY Does It
Heather Moore describes her highly sought-after
Skinny laMinx fabrics as a mixture of Scandinavian
simplicity, Japanese restraint and South African
exuberance rolled into one fresh and distinctive
style. ‘My most Africa-inspired fabrics are probably
my pincushion proteas and my Sevilla Rock
collection – animal images based on San rock
art from caves in the Cederberg. The idea was
to remove cave paintings from their value as
artefacts and tourist attractions and look at them
as beautiful drawings.’
A former book illustrator, Heather had no training
in textiles or design. ‘I’ve learned things as I go. The
internet has been my biggest marketing tool. I blog
about my work regularly, sell online and often have
my things featured on other design blogs.’ She has
recently opened a store and studio in Bree Street,
Cape Town, and sells
her ranges in the US,
Canada, Europe, the
UK, Australia and
New Zealand, Japan
and Hong Kong.
• www.skinnylaminx.
com
Skinny laMinx’s
delightful yellow
antelope gallop
over a bucket
chair, fusing
minimalism
with colourful
African motifs.
Fabricnation gives classic French toile
de jouy an African twist.
French Twist
Inspired by African textile traditions while at art
school in the 80s, Jane Solomon and Jann Cheifitz
began screenprinting fabric in a garage, putting
tradition into a modern urban context. That was the
seed of Fabricnation.
‘We aim to bring fresh visual perspectives to the
textile marketplace,’ says Jane, and certainly no
one else is doing anything like Fabricnation’s Toile
du Jozi range. With its Joburg skyline and women
with buckets on their heads, it’s an African take on
the classic French fabric toile de jouy. ‘Toile’ is the
French word for the canvas you paint on and toiles
usually feature old-fashioned pastoral scenarios.
This kind of quiet irony prevails in most of
Fabricnation’s ranges. African Royale is a playful
local version of traditional damask – the royal lion
surrounded by ostrich feathers and animals. Bokkie
is an art deco interpretation of the South African
Railways springbok.
Jann currently lives in New York, but continues
to collaborate on Fabricnation with Jane, whose
studio/showroom is in Woodstock, Cape Town.
• www.fabricnation.co.za
Shall We Dance?
‘Kiff is South African slang for cool,’ says Faye George.
‘We were looking for a name that was typically South
African with a fun feel to it.’ She and Rosemary
Harman, who have advertising backgrounds, run
their two-woman business, So Kiff, in Linden,
Johannesburg. They produce whimsical fabrics
like their dancer range, in which the pata-pata and
gumboot dancers are depicted in a series of stop-frame
images, in hot pink, lime, turquoise and yellow.
‘The biggest problem is having to compete with
cheap fabric from China,’ says Faye. ‘We try to
Swimgirls is one of Design Team’s most popular lines.
overcome this by creating a homegrown silkscreened
South African product you wouldn’t get from China
and have found that more and more people are
supporting local products.’
• sokiff.wordpress.com
Urban Icons
Pretoria design dynamos Lise Butler and Amanda
Haupt of Design Team have been producing handsilkscreened prints with a strong local flavour ever
since they graduated together 12 years ago from
Technikon Pretoria’s textiles department.
The department subsidised their first stand at
Decorex as a marketing tool and the response to
their designs was overwhelming. ‘At that stage most
South African designers were obsessed with global
trends,’ says Lise. ‘They didn’t realise there was
a huge market for inspired textiles with a local feel
that was not ethnic.’
Design Team now has a permanent staff of 40,
producing clothing and furniture as well as fabric.
Among their most popular lines are the Drum
covergirls, Bok polish, Swimgirls and Jive, in cottons
and linens.
• www.designteamfabrics.co.za