Mysterious skin

PHOTOS Jan Ras WORDS Nadine Botha

Andile Dyalvane’s heartwarming tale of success – from living in a rural village in the Eastern Cape to becoming a top South African ceramicist – is the stuff of legend. We visited him in his Imiso Ceramics studio in Woodstock.

Although internationally renowned for his ceramics, the humble 34-year-old’s story is only just starting, as he turns his attention to a new medium: leather. His exploration of leather came about when a client fell in love with four huge ceramic vases but was dismayed to find that they were too heavy for his yacht. He asked Andile if he could express the works in a different medium. Feeling that oil and canvas would be too standard, the ceramicist decided to try leather after being exposed to the material through the work of his wife Alexis.

Despite having no training or knowledge of leatherwork, Andile has struck upon the radical innovation that is known as beginner’s luck. One day, he left a design on the kiln by accident and came back to discover a brittle misshapen work that cracked when water was applied.

By learning to control this cracking, using steam and insetting the gouges with colour, Andile has made the leather take on the qualities of clay. To say that he has turned leather into clay, however, is a chicken-and-egg question, since Andile’s distinctive clay technique is widely known to be inspired by Xhosa scarification techniques.

Whether skin or clay came first, the resulting laptop, bowling and clutch bags are original, to say the least. Moreover, as exemplified by the leather belts with ceramic buckles, these designs are wearable “objets de céramique”.

imisoceramics.co.za