Eyes on the world

Marisa Fick-Jordaan

Part of the Zenzulu collection

Oprah, Oscar de la Renta, DKNY, Liberty of London, The Conran Shop and Neiman Marcus are just a few of the high-end clients of Zenzulu's Marisa Fick-Jordaan and her team of 300 home-based craftspeople in Durban, who make telephone-wire products and beaded jewellery. About 70% of it sells overseas through direct export or shows.

“Five of the buyers I met at Maison & Objet in Paris last January will be at the Expo this year and others want information. It's great that the world comes to us!” says Fick-Jordaan, who as both exhibitor and curator since the Expo's inception, has watched it become the ultimate local guide to contemporary design.

“The reason it draws the high-calibre buyers is that it's not just another trade show where anyone can exhibit. Strict criteria under the theme of High End & Home Grown apply. All exhibitors are screened by curators.”

Each year she shows something new and original. “My classic ranges are well known in the marketplace, so I like to use the Expo to show newer, less commercial work. This year I'm doing nature and jungle assemblage pieces that blur the boundaries between design and art.”

Trained at Natal University and Natal Technikon, Fick-Jordaan was one of the first to fuse traditional African weaving techniques with cutting-edge design.

Zenzulu's products have been widely acclaimed and widely copied. But she updates designs regularly, introducing new colours and techniques. “I like to push the boundaries of the materials and the skills of the producers. I also like to work on special projects — I'm working with an upmarket Italian brand and London-based architects on two new hotels.”

For more information, visit: www.zenzulu.co.za

Y Tsai of Tsai Design Studio

Like many architects, this Cape Town schooled and UCT-trained 36-year-old has side-tracked into product design, with enormous success. His Nested Bunk Beds won the European Red Dot award in 2007, were voted the Design Indaba's Most Beautiful Object in SA in 2008 and have been selected for the South Legend exhibition that will travel overseas representing the best of SA design.

“Though it was exciting designing the beds and seeing the prototypes in the factory, it was only when I stood in the orphanage where they were first tested that I realised how effectively socially conscious design can change people's lives,” says this unassuming son of a Taiwanese agriculturalist.

The bed system has become part of a new NGO called Shoebox Homes, which specialises in affordable innovative furniture for small spaces. As one of the founders, Tsai was selected as the SA finalist in the British Council's International Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year award and flown to London for three weeks.

“My design approach is not to do the obvious. I test new ideas by entering design contests to see if my ideas are unique. I work with three other freelance draughtsmen, and have a few reliable subcontractors who do not bat an eye when I present them with crazy ideas.”

This is his fourth Expo and he has several projects on it. They include an Ostrich Bar Stool, which is a finalist in the Western Cape Furniture Design contest to be judged at the Expo, an art works showcase stand in the form of a forest of PVC pipes, and an audiovisual room designed like a tree canopy.

For more, see: www.tsaidesignstudio.com

Wool Products

You might not think felt décor items would be a particularly hot-selling item. But Ronel Jordaan's realistic felt pebble cushions are so unusual and alluring they've been featured in the New York Times, Vogue and Elle Décor internationally.

“I was just lucky with my timing,” says this Gauteng-based designer. “Felt has made a comeback after being regarded as old-fashioned for years. Orders just poured in after my first exhibition at the 2005 Design Indaba. Trend guru Li Edelkoort even exhibited some of my products in Paris.”

She exports about 90% of her scarves, shawls, wall-hangings, throws and pebble carpets all over the world, especially to the colder countries, where felt is regarded as cosy.

“I used to work with street children as an art therapist and one day I gave them felt to play with. The effect was so magical I fell in love with the stuff and started a business creating felt designs with a group of disadvantaged women.” That was in 2004. Now she has 23 women working on an incentive scheme.

“We only use pure wool and it's all handmade, whereas others use synthetic felt. Our only synthetic element is our polyester filling.”

Her products have been widely acclaimed. She's won Elle Décor's Decoration International Design Award for Best Soft Furnishings and Canada's SIDM award for excellence, and she was voted one of SA's Top Ten Designers by Visi magazine, nominated for Formidable in Sweden and chosen for Trends at Maison & Objet in Paris.

See more: www.roneljordaan.com

Clementina van der Walt Ceramic Studio

Clementina van der Walt's tiles, platters, vases, bowls and cups are so in demand that this weekend she was exhibiting at both the Design Indaba Expo and in England at the Royal College of Art's international show, Ceramic Art London — for the fifth successive year. She and Hennie Meyer, the only other South African exhibiting, share a stand with a black-and white theme.

In the oversubscribed domain of ceramics, SA's much-admired and much imitated maker of ceramic tableware and wall panels has developed a style during her 35-year career that is much her own, using clays and glazes in a way that is unique to her.

“Most of my work consists of one-off items, using a signature vocabulary that is clearly distinguishable. I don't particularly follow fashion trends, but rather focus on developing my own language, even though it's inspired and influenced by many external elements.”

Her studio is in downtown Cape Town, in an Art Deco building that was once the Colosseum Theatre, alongside the A.R.T. Gallery run by her partner Albie Bailey. On the wall above where she works she has a quote from William Morris, founder of the Arts & Crafts movement: “Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Both her career and her environment are a striking embodiment of this notion.

For more: http://www.clementinaceramics.blogspot.com/

Source: Financial Mail

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