Planet Peet

PHOTOS: Micky Hoyle | PRODUCTION: Sumien Brink | WORDS: Johan van Zyl

The office of Cape Town creative agency Daddy Buy Me A Pony is an exuberant cultural circus for the senses.

When the southeaster blows for weeks on end, even the muses get heartburn. Their refuge is in Spin Street, a stone’s throw from Parliament and the Groote Kerk, behind an old wooden door discreetly tucked between a coffee shop and a hair and beauty salon.

One of the muses looks like a wooden zebra without stripes, while another (particularly pernickety) is in the image of a Happy Needle sewing kit. Fifteen or so are posing as colourful African textiles and another lot are in a display case in the boardroom, pretending to be birds, perched on a branch by an artful taxidermist.

There is also a yellowed Philips’ Smaller School-Room Map of Africa (scale 1: 9 000 000), a fleshy Butt magazine, a giant Titanic pop-up book, a springbok, a dazzling pair of kickboxing shorts…

View it all through a camera lens and the cultural hodgepodge of Daddy Buy Me A Pony’s workspace is transformed into an ornate still life, a two-dimensional circus frozen in mid-cavalcade.

This is where Peet Pienaar and his business partner Heidi Chisholm, sweating – and often swearing – give birth to a multitude of concepts and projects; not only commissions for international clients such as the Swiss theatre group Teaterspektakel or the one-room Hotel Everland, but also their own product range, which they intend to market actively this year.

At the Design Indaba, for instance, they are launching a (still nameless) range of carpets with six different designs as well as the third issue of Afro, their pan-African journal, printed this time on a shiny space blanket and packed in a cigarette box. They are also planning a range of outrageous takkies with ‘unconnected’ words such as ‘Man has no rest’ threaded through the laces; the prototypes stand ready for action in a display case.

New beginning

‘Yes,’ says Peet, just back from an excursion to Buenos Aires with his Argentinian partner, ‘for a while now I’ve been trying to move away from pure graphic design and focus more on product design, specifically these carpets, shoes and perhaps magazines.’ It’s another new beginning, just as he once exchanged art for performance art (which included a controversial circumcision ritual and the presentation of his foreskin in a bottle to the Durban Art Gallery).

Later he got fed up with the ‘boring self-indulgence’ of the art world and decided to embrace the ‘far greater possibilities, responsibilities, impact and audience,’ of the design world. A good move, because in another glass case the awards gleam cheek to cheek: Loeries, BASAs, international Clios…

Daddy Buy Me A Pony discovered this new work space (which belongs to a well-known textile group) last winter, when they spotted an advertisement on a dignified old wooden door on the street. ‘We liked the old building very much,’ says our gentle giant, ‘and the beautiful woodwork, of course.’

The budget was tight but in second-hand and antique shops in Rugby, Salt River, Kalk Bay and Voortrekker Road they found lovely old wooden furniture, from chests of drawers, cupboards and display cases to a leaf-shaped coffee table, a charming teak drinks cabinet and a wardrobe that now serves as a kitchen.

Some pieces are stacked one on top of the other, and feet have been glammed up with gold leaf and paint. Fire engines, police cars, fighter planes and helicopters race across the wallpaper; the floor is bright with rugs from African Image – and the agency’s new designs, of course. The chairs are just ‘cheap simple office chairs,’ Peet explains.

‘We spent a lot of time walking around the neighbourhood looking for inspiration. One example of what we found was an incredible blue in an unrestored room in the nearby Slave Lodge. We shaved off a sliver of paint and had the colour mixed for the walls in the boardroom. We put up the dado rails and painted them ourselves, and in the entrance we emphasised the wooden feel with vinyl flooring.

Another fresh start

In the reception area, a desk has been built into an existing little ‘tower’ and storage space for files has been provided behind a screen of old curtain fabric. The picture is completed with a kitsch bull-and-matador carpet that gives the reception counter a ‘more Moslem feel’, according to Peet.

Another shining display in the same room is a Cape Town pistol and chain designed by Peet and made by Heidi’s sister, Shelly Bergh, who ‘cut it out of polystyrene with a hot wire and covered it in gold glitter’.

‘Shelly actually handled the entire production side of the new office – she is definitely the main reason why we could move in a month later and make a fresh start!’ Peet chuckles.

Now another fresh start is on the cards, because Heidi is moving with her family to America and Peet is starting a new creative agency with Hannerie Visser, the current publisher of VISI.

The new undertaking will more than likely be christened SUPER, but one thing is certain: it will be behind a wooden door in Spin Street, a stone’s throw from Parliament and the Groote Kerk, discreetly tucked between a coffee shop and a hair and beauty salon.

• Daddy Buy Me A Pony: 021 462 6092, www.daddybuymeapony.co.za