The South African Handmade Collection, Quick trip, big choices and tough decision making

30Sep11

South Africa is one of the African countries taking an aggressive role in supporting its arts and crafts. The Department of Trade and Industry brings together

each year selected craftspeople from South Africa’s provinces (Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, Kwazulu Natal, Western Cape, Northern Cape and Eastern Cape)

for the Handmade Collection. It was a short trade show but in every way a great opportunity to see the variety of products South Africa has to offer under one roof, to talk to the Provincial agents, the crafts people themselves and to interact with other buyers.

The first day was organized around visiting the various provinces and getting an overall picture of what was being offered. Needless to day, corralling buyers with diverse interest was not easy but a genuine effort was made to have us look and come back later to follow up with specific individuals. Being confronted with such a wealth of possibility was challenging in terms of what to purchase and when. Though I had been to South Africa before, this is the first time product and location became a significant part of my knowledge base. The Department of Trade and Industry had categorized exporters into different levels of experience: Established exporter, exporting for three years and more, Emerging exporter, exporting between one and three

years, and domestic supplier, supplying the local market for a minimum of a year. These differences were clear as we moved from person to person.

If you think South African craft, you almost automatically go to bead work and there was a wealth of that used in so many different ways. I thought the beaded wine bags were outstanding and an excellent gift for anyone looking for that hard to please “man”. Jewelry here spans the gauntlet of “seen it all thousand times” to totally new takes such as recycling old South African stamps as one young South African woman had done. She makes them into rings, pendants and bracelets. I was also pleased to see young South Africans making high end silver jewelry and for the men there were beautiful cuff links.

For my customers who have been buying dishes from the Potter’s Workshop, I added a line of dishware from Limpopo. I love the red in the earthfire collection. There were many ceramic artists there and choices had to be made between the more colorful contemporary pieces or the more traditional monochrome pieces. This time I chose the contemporary with the intention of ordering some of the other pieces. Kwazulu Natal is famous for its telephone wire baskets and I could not resist buying the biggest and best one for the shop. Lately, there have been several customers looking for items for babies and so when I came across booties made from felt, I couldn’t resist and began to imagine a “Grandma’s corner” just for kids. This was further reinforced when I met a doll maker who makes the beautiful multi-hued dolls which reflects the diversity of the South African population. Teapots anyone? I have occasionally gotten in teapots but they have been a rare find. This time there were many choices and so if you’re a teapot collector, they’re in. One of the priority items on my list, was Christmas ornaments for the annual Artists ornament show which will be the weekend of Nov. 26-27. I found unique angels, beaded and seeded (one woman used seeds to make standing angles which are adorable).

It was a long trip for a short period of time and I would have loved to stay longer and view some of the beautiful scenery and historic gems in South Africa. However, that leaves room for another, longer trip sometime in the future.

There were many