Similar changes are taking place in all spheres of South African design. Long beholden to European esthetics, which were initially imposed by colonists and more recently imported by Westerners who flocked to the country after the fall of apartheid, South African designers are now forging–and finding an enthusiastic market for–a more indigenous style. Tin roofs and corrugated iron, staples of township architecture, are starting to creep into upscale neighborhoods that have long been dominated by faux Tuscan and Provencal villas. Interior designers are crafting chic, modern furniture and accessories that draw upon more subtle African elements than Zulu spears and shields. “Design should be thought-provoking, not obvious,” says Cape Town designer Jeremy Stewart, 34. “You don’t see Viking horns in Scandinavian design, do you?”
Travelers can view the new style at Johannesburg International Airport, where the Stewart-designed Virgin Atlantic departure lounge opened last September. He and his team from Design House used rich oranges, reds and browns, the colors of the African soil, to depict the city as a “gateway to Africa.” A wall of glass balls suggests both traditional beadwork and the gold mines that built the city. Textures were juxtaposed to underscore the country’s own divided personality: steel-mesh columns with white river stones, a granite wall behind the glass bar. “Johannesburg is about contrasts,” says Stewart. “Rich/poor, industrial/rural, developed/natural. We tried to reflect that.” The result is hip, modern–yet still comfortable.
This new confidence is a striking departure from the “poor cousin” attitude that pervaded the country under apartheid. “South Africans used to just take ideas from Europe and ignore what we have here,” says Stewart. Increasingly, the reverse is true: customers overseas seem to be snapping up all that’s South African. “We do a huge amount of exporting to Europe and the United States. Lots of people are doing an African room,” says Sally van Hoogstraten of Van den Berghs, a specialty furniture store in Cape Town. Clay and Colista Yates of Crowley, Texas, visited her store in the spring of 2000 and liked it so much they ordered two leather sofas made from kudu (a breed of antelope), a zebra and kudu ottoman and an armchair. “I was amazed with the comfort, feel and the natural beauty of the leathers,” says Clay.
What’s attracting the international attention is what Anne Leguillier, former head of the ethnic-goods section of the Paris design show Maison & Objets, calls a “turn toward the contemporary.” Cape Town interior designer Bobby Breen, 45, for instance, has produced a sleek line of lamps, made from ostrich-egg shells and molded-resin game horns, that have become big sellers at showcases like Maison & Objets and the Milan International Furniture Fair. Last year Rachael Barraclough, consultant curator for contemporary design at Sotheby’s in London, helped found LOSA (London-South Africa), a project that matches British designers with South African artisans to create contemporary, South African-inspired crafts. Most of the proceeds go back to the artisans’ communities. Among the items that were sold at Sotheby’s last February were a line of colorful bowls made from telephone wire, used locally for toothbrush holders, trash baskets and mobiles, and a line of white, bowl-shaped lights made from ostrich-egg shells. Some of these products will go on sale next month in top South African shops and at the Conran stores in New York, London, Paris and Tokyo.
The international attention is helping fuel the market for South African products at home. Says Breen, “It’s a little sad that we need worldwide recognition before South Africans will start to use something.” But the designers take what they can get. Some have been trying for years to educate local consumers about design and have plenty of horror stories. Architect Willem Jansen remembers one Swiss couple who made him redesign their Cape Town dining room around a $4,000 table: a slab of crystal perched on three elephant tusks, tied with a brass bow. “Words cannot express how hideous it was,” Jansen says. He also can’t understand “why people persist in copying styles from other vernaculars,” which are at odds with the local environment. He points to the glass-and-concrete mansions on the wealthy Atlantic coast of Cape Town. “When the sun sets, those things turn into ovens,” he says. “You can’t live in them.” On the other hand, he says, “There’s a wealth of design knowledge in the townships.”
Savvy builders are learning to apply some of that local wisdom. In his community Domaine des Anges in the wealthy wine town of Franschoek, Clark has planted fynbos–a unique local vegetation–under the rosebushes, and installed tin roofs on the million-rand houses. “It’s no longer a case of tacky Tuscan or pretty Provence,” he says proudly. “We’re African.”
Stewart agrees. “As a unified country, people can be proud of all that’s African, instead of being selective,” he says. “So where before someone white and conservative would have been proud of his rugby team, now he can be proud of his rugby team, his soccer team, his national anthem and his president.” And, of course, his ostrich-egg lamp.
With Tracy McNicoll in Paris and Barbie Nadeau in Rome
