A local team of photographers Janus Boshoff and Inge Prins has created a series of DIY eco-friendly and uncomplicated Cyanotype kits for people to try out the exciting process easily at home. We chat with Inge about how it all works.

Invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), cyanotype art prints are made in a particular permanent process, rendering images in a vibrant Prussian blue tone. Sir Herschel’s photographs from the 1840s survive to this day. Often the first alternative process tried by artists and celebrated for its simplicity, cost-effectiveness and safe working procedures.

The English botanical artist and collector, Anna Atkins, was the world’s first female photographer, and she was also the first person to illustrate a book with photographic images using the cyanotype process. Her nineteenth-century cyanotypes used light exposure and a simple chemical process to create impress detailed blueprints of botanical specimens.

How did the idea for the kits come about?

Since 2004 Janus Boshoff has supplied the Southern African photography market with handmade photographic chemicals. His friendship with Dennis da Silva, a black-and-white master printer, has led to the exploration of alternative handmade processes. The kits came about for their own needs to print in these beautiful old processes, as most of the chemicals need to be imported, and due to frequent inquiries by fellow artists, the kits were made available to purchase through shops and agents. Dennis still prints and teaches these old processes at his studio in Johannesburg, the Alternative Print Workshop.

What is in each kit?

This kit is a modern version of the original formula used by Herschel in the 1840s and uses the base iron compounds ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. The kits are pre-mixed in amber glass bottles, simply mix equal quantities, give it a good stir, and coat onto paper with a brush. Once the coating has dried, it is exposed to sunlight, and rinsed in water to produce permanent images. The kits produce approximately 50 x A4 coated paper sheets. 

Are there some cool tips and tricks for making your own?

The process works well on most natural and porous surfaces. Any paper can work but watercolour paper comes out beautifully. You can also print onto cloth – hemp, cotton and silk are all good choices. Make sure to prewash the material to dispose of the internal sizing. The cyanotype process is very sensitive to alkaline solutions, it is always a good idea to wash printed fabrics in shampoo instead of washing detergent. 

Heavy objects with good negative silhouettes work very well, or if you do choose lighter objects like feathers you can place a sheet of glass or clear perspex over the object to press them down and keep them from moving. 

Glass on top is not compulsory but it does make for sharper prints. You can even mix it up with some objects under glass and some on top. 

One can also draw on clear acetate or print negatives onto acetate and make direct contact prints. 

It is worth doing small test prints to ensure you get the exposure time right. Increase exposure time for cloudy weather or for when the sun is lower in the sky. The exposure works with UV light. 

A good tip is to keep your surface in the shade or a dark space while you lay your objects on top to slow the exposure down before moving the surface into the full sun. You can clamp the surface onto a board or work on a tray. 

The whole idea is to be playful and to try different things and not be precious about it. Once you get the hang of making dry prints you can also try wet cyanotype printing. The internet is filled with great ideas and suggestions. 

What makes this style of artistic expression fun?

A sense of experimentation and exploration. As anybody can make a cyanotype print, and almost anything that is made with it has a unique beauty to it, the medium opens itself up to children and teenagers and artists and even those that do not think they are creative (we are all creative!)

Where can people get hold of the kits?

Inge runs an Instagram page dedicated to Cyanotype and shares inspiration and information on the workshop and the method. People can DM her there to order kits or email her directly. We are in the process of setting up an online shop too which will simplify the process. Customers can choose to collect the kits in Muizenberg ( for free) or ask for delivery via The Courrier Guys for an extra fee. 

Can anyone do it?

Absolutely! The process is non-toxic and very easy to do. Children love making cyanotypes. It is completely safe. Small children will need adult supervision and guidance. Anyone and everyone can manage the process as it is so simple. The prepared paper packs make great gifts too and are instantly ready to print. 

Looking for more local art? Sign up to our weekly newsletter, here.

The post All About CYANOTYPE appeared first on Visi.

On a hill, surrounded by Stellenbosch’s mountains and vineyards, is a farmhouse with a big garden. Here, owner Heather Arnold gets her hands dirty, but also spends time inside creating stories with old pictures, velvet ribbon and books.

Heather Arnold remembers her mother’s curtains from when she was a little girl. They were red-and-white striped brocade and she didn’t care for them. Today she would love those old curtains, and wonders what happened to them. 

She also remembers that her mother never changed her house, at all. She didn’t move the furniture, or anything else around. Ever. Heather does, all the time. 

The self-taught artisan’s home is a 14-year-old double-storey farmhouse she shares with her winemaker husband, Kevin. Designed by architect Michael Dall, it’s the type of home they’ve always wanted – a stone house, its facade clad with rock earthed from their farm. 

Right from the start of construction, she and Kevin were very clear about details such as the open beams throughout, the rugged whitewashed brick walls, and the reed ceilings in the main bedroom and kitchen. Their three now-adult children were still living at home then, and they wanted the house to have a relaxed country feeling. 

With time marching on as it does, the house has settled into itself. All its rooms have soft-shaded furniture, rugged walls and high ceilings, and many double doors opening up to every side of the garden. All of it a simple backdrop to showcase Heather’s innate tendency to move things around her home. 

It looks as if she creates little stories with objects and knick-knacks: antique dresses with an old framed painting of an unknown landscape are grouped with magazine cuttings. She does it in all the corners of the rooms, even inside and beside the fireplaces, across the large windows of the staircase, the bathrooms and the bedrooms. Somehow, she does it in a way that makes things sit next to each other naturally, as if they belong together, forever. But they don’t. As we know, she changes things around, all the time.

Heather finds her treasures in special shops, where she looks for anything that catches her eye, from a lampshade covered in woolly fur (which reminds her of the 10 pet goats that used to roam around her garden), to handmade cards with botanical prints. For now they are simply stuck onto the facade of a fireplace, subtle and charming. Just the other day, she happened on some velvet ribbon and decided to bind together the rose-printed cushions on the sofa. Then she noticed that many of the books on the ceiling-to-floor bookshelf needed to be turned around to bare their creamy yellow sides. It fitted with the colour of the ribbon.

Heather has a room of her own beside the staircase, which she would have called her office, if she had one. It is here where she brings her special finds to be unpacked or unwrapped and where she sometimes leaves things for a bit. While looking at the fabric piles topped with magazine cut-outs, and threads of happy bunting weaving its colours into dried hydrangeas stuck into a chandelier, Heather explains that she doesn’t like things to look too complete, too perfect. Unfinished stories mean there’s more to be told…

Outside on the veranda, the one where the dining room’s double doors open up to look across a stone pond and vineyards, the stories continue. Beautiful old floral tapestries are loosely bound to the back of chairs, their stitched toil framed by the sunlight caught at certain times of the day. 

While standing here, Heather the collector confesses to being a gardener, and that the entire layout of their expansive garden – from deciding where the vegetable and herb patch should be, right to the forms of the many flowerbeds and the faraway fruit-treed lane – is her handiwork. 

But gardening is for another day, she says as she turns around to make tea in her pink antique set, something beautiful she inherited from her mother.  

Michael Dall Architects, 021 797 8102, mdarch.co.za

The post Stellenbosch Winelands Villa appeared first on Visi.