Cape Town-based jewellery designer Karin Rae has launched a brand new collection just in time for summer.

With a strong focus on tropical designs, Dear Rae’s Spring/Summer 2015 range (aka Let’s Get Tropsi) includes Delicious Monster bracelets, banana split rings, palm leaf pendants and watermelon rings, all of which are not only expertly crafted, but serve as a happy reminder that summer really is on its way.

Prices range from R385 for a brass palm ring to R9 400 for a pear-shaped green tourmaline ring in 9ct yellow gold.

Visit the Dear Rae store-come-studio at Shop 3, 160 Albert Road, The Woodstock Foundry, Woodstock, Cape Town from 9am until 5pm Mondays to Thursdays, 9am until 4pm on Fridays and 10am until 2pm on Saturdays.

For more information and to shop the entire collection online, visit dearrae.co.za.

The post Dear Rae’s New Range appeared first on Visi.

Lauren Fowler describes herself as an illustrator, graphic designer and thing-maker. Take that last bit seriously because, whether it
’s knitted, sewn, hand-drawn or digitally illustrated, she makes lots of beautiful things we want to take home with us. VISI caught up with Lauren at her Woodstock Foundry studio, Lost Is A Place Too, to see what kind of things she’s made of…

What did you want to be when you were a child?

A till lady.

What was the first thing you designed?

A glow-bead necklace to wear over weekends at the Goodwood Ice Rink.

What are some of your biggest accomplishments?

Committing to being freelance, blindly believing work will always come; seeing my work in magazines and newspapers is exciting; so is working with national companies.

What is your design philosophy?

Work it until you
are happy with it.

In your view, does South Africa have a unique design language?

Yes, I can’t quite put my finger on it but everything always looks finessed, not mass-produced.
Our products feel crafted.

What would you decree if you were appointed Minister of Design in the national government?

Holy Moley! This is why I draw pictures. But if I have to answer: getting funded designers to work together with government to create a better city, or find solutions to meet pressing needs in poorer areas.

Advice for aspiring designers?

Trust your gut. Every time.

082 796 8205, laurenfowler.co.za, lostisaplacetoo.blogspot.com

Did you see the winners of VISI’s cross-stitch competition?

The post Cross-stitch queen appeared first on Visi.

Animals are awesome in decor right now and Julia Jaki and Phillip Schulz have opened Mandibles in the Woodstock Foundry to showcase and sell their collection of skulls, horns and heads. 

Animal-inspired three-dimensional design, specifically taxidermy, has taken centre stage in design circles recently. This scientific art form has received something of a bad rap over the past century, due to its connection to the hunting industry. However, its story is much bigger than that, especially in the world of museums, where it’s used as a way to preserve the beauty and knowledge of the animal kingdom. Its return makes sense, especially considering our fascination with all things farmhouse over the past few years. 

Julia Jaki, co-owner of Mandibles, a natural history collection shop in the trendy Woodstock Foundry in Cape Town, says she has experienced an increase in shop traffic, from interior designers looking for animal heads to hang on the walls of fashionable homes to jewellery designers looking for bird skulls to incorporate into their designs. After 11 years of exporting, she and her taxidermist partner, Philipp Schulz, decided to open the showroom to meet rising local demand. Regarding the ethics, their collection is made up of animals that died of natural causes at bird parks and zoos, and the skulls and horns are all by-products of SA’s sustainable game farming industry.

076 762 1330 (Julia), 082 350 2320 (Philipp), mandiblescollection.com

Read more about Woodstock and it’s evolution into Cape Town’s unofficial design district.

Read more articles by Malibongwe Tyilo.

The post The wild appeared first on Visi.

Lees in Afrikaans.

For creative professionals, like many of our readers, the perfect workspace is not the conventional airbrushed office. Instead location, neighbours, edginess and authenticity are more important in ensuring that the surroundings continue to inspire. VISI visited Side Street Studios in Woodstock to see what has drawn some of the city’s finest designers and artists. 

The rise of Albert Road in Woodstock as the place to work, eat and shop for designers, artisans, thing-makers and those who love them, is no longer breaking news. You’ve probably already heard of the Woodstock Foundry, and the indie designer shops and Superette at the Woodstock Exchange, the list goes on… Yet there’s always a new place opening up, and most are unique, grabbing our attention again, demanding that we go back and brave Albert Road taxi traffic and hip young city things on single-gear bikes. The development of Side Street Studios is another such occasion.

Essentially Side Street Studios mopped up the designers who left the Woodstock Industrial Centre when it started changing into Woodstock Exchange. Situated on the corner of Station and Albert road, it is just a block down. Organically it grew support and, even before its own renovation and name change, the Side Street Studios was quickly filled with celebrated artists including Barend de Wet, Stuart Bird and Faith47. Design residents include Kraftisan and Thingking – the latter kept a foot in both camps, with showroom in the Woodstock Exchange and workshop in Side Street Studios.

In its new cleaned up incarnation, Side Street Studios is now also home to a selection of spaces that invite the general public to participate, look, maybe buy a book, coffee or artwork, even get hot and sweaty in a capoeira class.

From the street, the first thing you’ll notice is a massive, brightly coloured mural by Madrid-based artist Oscar San Biguel, which fits in well with the graffiti culture of the area, while also introducing a fresh aesthetic. That’s not the last you’ll see either, go inside the building’s courtyard and there’s more murals to feast your eyes.

While you’re at it, pop into Let There Be Light studio, home to conceptual artist Nix Davies. It is a “changing space that has the ability to be whatever you can imagine it to be”. No really, it has been used as a gallery, workshop, lecture room, movie theatre, kitchen, nursery and a restaurant, and Nix is on hand to help towards the realisation of different projects within the space.

However, it’s not just about the permanent structures. Side Street Studios has also been home to pop-ups, weekly events and once-off exhibitions that are constantly finding new ways to use the space. Cape Town’s Yang Zhao has used it to host her increasingly popular pop-up dim sum nights, Beijing Opera. Photographer Max Mogale hosted an exhibition of various artists that made use of the walls and passages on all the floors of the building.

The most recent semi-permanent happening is Busk Tuesdays, which sees three emerging creatives (musicians, poets and artists) invited to perform in a raw environment. It’s free and patrons are encouraged to embrace and support the music by giving them money.

It’s this open-ended approach to creativity of Side Street Studios that has captured our imagination and kept us going back. That and the promise that every time we go back, between this building, covered in and housing art, and the people that frequent it, we’re bound to see something that will inspire us. 

Side Street Studios, 48 Albert Road, Woodstock, info@sidestreet.co.za.

Get VISI 66 The Office for some of the other inspiring workspaces that we found or view others online. 

The post Side to side appeared first on Visi.

Cape Town’s cool crowd has flocked to the Woodstock Foundry since the opening of Tribe Coffee’s new multifunctional space: a Benedikt Books store, coffee roastery and coffee shop with fabulous bespoke furniture designs by MBA.

We love the way the different spaces – a Benedikt Books store, the coffee roastery and the Tribe coffee shop – complement each other. All lead onto a paved courtyard that serves as a communal area and binding element and have been furnished by MBA, a bespoke furniture design company.

We caught up with Jake Easton, self-proclaimed “trailblazer” at Tribe, and Frederik Lötter, one quarter of the design team at MBA, to pick their brains about the importance of collaboration and the development of their individual brands.

What’s the history behind the brand?

Jake (from Tribe): Tribe started as a tool to give luxury coffee to the masses. I was on my own in the beginning until Kate Nero approached me one day after a good run and asked: “What if I got us a coffee roaster?” That day Tribe changed from a one-man exhibition into a collaborative melding of thinking coffee professionals. We created the company in order to develop a “your cafe” brand by allowing luxury taste and training at a cost that allows for their growth. In short: Good coffee at a low price with barista/cafe owner/manager training that puts the staff and the communities around that cafe in touch with the third-wave coffee revolution techniques that are taking over the world.

Freddy (from MBA): We are four colleagues in an architectural practice in Somerset West. Like most architects, we share a mutual frustration with the limitations external forces place on the design process. As the production of architecture is a highly collaborative effort where pure design often has to give way to more pressing considerations, we rarely get the opportunity to really design according to our own creative agendas. The resulting creative frustration is what sparked the idea of MBA (Made By Architects). We see MBA as a vehicle to explore our own creative impulses on a scale that is affordable and accessible to a much wider public.

Woodstock, one of Cape Town’s oldest suburbs, has blossomed into a creative industrial hub. Did this play a part in why The Foundry was chosen as a commercial space?

Jake: Because our business is not to open our own cafes and have a street presence to compete with the rest of the coffee world, we never really thought about what a cafe should be. We were only looking for a site to house our roaster and to use as a distribution centre. Then the Benedikt Books crowd showed us the plans for their offices and we were suddenly able to also envision a roastery and cafe.

The Woodstock and Salt River areas have undergone a 180 degree turnaround over the past ten years. As we walked around the site, and later walked the streets around the Woodstock Foundry, we were absolutely enthralled by what Woodstock is becoming. One must also give credit where it’s due: The Biscuit Mill was the catalyst that started the transformation and we are all the beneficiaries thereof.

While the Tribe coffee shop is furnished with beautiful bespoke pieces by MBA, the space also boasts a Benedikt Books store. How important is creative collaboration?

Jake: Creative collaboration is the only way to drive inspiration and change. This collaboration inspires personal curiosity and is also a tool to drive personal growth. The way in which Made by Architects became involved and transformed the space with its calm beautiful bamboo designer furniture is proof thereof. Talk to the staff at Benedikt, Tribe, MBA or Opus (who shares the space with its hanging plants)… we are all different, but there is suddenly a drive to do more, try more, see more.

Freddy: No business can be sustainable if it’s built solely on achieving more for itself. Collaboration is the essence of the age-old Vitruvian principle of working together for the greater good of the community. Woodstock is a creative community; the more we share, the more exposure we all enjoy, and the more value we add to the bigger picture. Creative collaboration is very important to us. We work together on all of our products, as we recognise each member’s particular strengths.

With the store now open, what would you ultimately like to achieve with the space?

Jake: There is a global idea, which began in Toronto, to transform cafes into offices or as they term it “coffices”. The New York Times or Atlantic Monthly published an article on how creative people benefit from working in a cafe where they are allowed anonymity while being surrounded by music, laughter and movement. The idea is that “cafe time” inspires. Cafes in France or the United States were centres for thought and revolutionary change 250 years ago. Why not be revolutionary? Coffee excites the mind; it wakes your system to faster thought; and if other thinking people surround you, inspiration will happen naturally. That Tribe is in a space surrounded by Bronze Age, Egon Tania, the Southern Guild artists and 15 other design and art centres, who’s to say what will arise? This is a space for growth, curiosity, design and some kind of imminent revolution.

Visit Tribe’s new space at The Foundry, 160 Albert Road or browse their website for more information.

Find out more about Made By Architects www.madebyarchitects.co.za

The post New Tribe at the Foundry appeared first on Visi.

Earth Hour, happening in South Africa at 8.30pm on Saturday 23 March, is when the globe goes dark as lights are switched off in a symbolic gesture to pledge our commitment to doing something positive for the planet. Make sure you have something planned for the planet.

The World Wide Fund for Nature in South Africa (WWF-SA) has launched a public artwork campaign to raise awareness for the world’s largest global mass action for the environment. Entailing murals in Johannesburg and Cape Town by acclaimed muralist Freddy Sam, aka Ricky Lee Gordon, the artworks are inspired by the WWF theme #WeAreAllConnected, and stand to visually highlight humankind’s dependence and connection to the natural world. 

The first mural was revealed on Tuesday 12 March at the trendy Maboneng Precinct in Johannesburg, and is the final product of a workshop held the previous week, where local residents were asked to illustrate their interpretations of the concept #WeAreAllConnected.

As with the Maboneng mural, a workshop was held at the Woodstock Foundry in Cape Town on Saturday 16 March where community members could express their designs on paper to give Ricky Lee some ideas for the public artwork. On the night of Earth hour, the Cape Town #WeAreConnected mural will be revealed at a special event in Woodstock. 

Make sure you contribute to raising awareness. What will you do for Earth Hour? www.facebook.com/WWFSA.

The post Earth Hour art appeared first on Visi.

Southern Guild ArcelorMittal SA Heavy Metal was an independent exhibition of high-end design investment pieces in the Woodstock Foundry at the same time as Design Indaba. Is this the beginning of a design-fuelled fringe festival?

Trevyn and Julian McGowan, the directors of Southern Guild, were not the only people to piggy back their event on the influx of design professionals into the Mother City. The European Light and Design Centre flew in Giullermo Simo Pascual from FLOS Italy to launch Patricia Urquiola’s new Tatou series, and Sodastream SA took the opportunity to celebrate the new Yves Behar-designed machine.

The Heavy Metal exhibition’s opening was perfectly timed: straight after the first day of the Design Indaba Conference. A live performance by Them Tornadoes, kinetic fire sculpture by Brendhan Dickerson, food trucks, and lots of wine and bubbly made for a stylish but laidback party atmosphere. Celebrated Malian designer Cheick Diallo showed work, and conference speaker David Adjaye made an unofficial appearance and whirlwind tour of the work.

With over 40 pieces on show, also noteworthy about Heavy Metal was the number of top South African designers and artists who were not exhibiting at the expo. Gregor Jenkin, Andile Dyalvane, Porky Hefer, Dokter and Misses, Joe Paine and many others chose to make a single statement piece for Heavy Metal, rather than creating a mass of low-cost high-turnover wares that typically do well at the expo.

“With the Heavy Metal exhibition we want to celebrate this age-old tradition of designers working in steel, bronze, copper, aluminium, gold and silver and the beauty of the raw material, but we equally want to throw a spotlight on the durability and appropriateness of this material in tough economic times when high quality investment pieces are, rightly, favoured over cheap, mass-produced, low-quality objects,” said Trevyn.

VISI thinks that it is fantastic that the South African design industry has grown to this point and the quality of the work on display said it all. In particular, we loved Ceramic Matters’s Dream Dolls, Dokter and Misses’s on-trend use of colour, Haldane Martin’s fabulous Hex brass tables and Guy du Toit’s whimsical hare tables.

For more of Southern Guild’s design collaborations, visit their website www.southernguild.co.za

The post Metal mania appeared first on Visi.

Aptly named Selah, a Hebrew word meaning “pause and reflect”, the shop is a carefully curated treasure trove of mostly vintage finds – everything from books to journals, art work and sheet music. Filled with little enough so as not to overwhelm but still ample to peruse, this is the kind of place you will almost never leave empty handed.

Opened in 2011, Selah is the brainchild of Andrew Breitenberg. His original metier as artist takes him primarily around poverty stricken areas of Africa where he brightens up neglected spaces with his street artwork. Each piece is created with the intention of recognising and acknowledging the people who inhabit the area. Selah duly followed as a public studio space and “way to engage in a dialogue which stands at the intersection of hope, activism, and creativity”.

Selah is not one to miss – whether you’re looking to fill your own home or someone else’s with a beautiful and original something, this is where you’ll find it.

Opening hours: Tue – Fri 10 – 4 / Sat 10 – 2

Woodstock Foundry / Shop No. 5

160 Albert Road

Woodstock

More info: www.selahmade.com

The post Selah at The Foundry appeared first on Visi.

Vogel design, located in the exciting new Woodstock development, The Foundry, is a producer of beautiful, minimal wooden furniture. Started by John Vogel, an architect turned furniture designer, the pieces reflect his love of flowing shapes and organic forms, as well as a strong and symbiotic relationship with nature.  

John’s decision to work in wood stems not only from his love of the material, but also the fact that its sustainability ties in with the increasing collective move towards accepting and embracing nature. Situated in Woodstock for the last five years, Vogel and the other creative companies in the building are part of a boom in local design – one that reflects a new generation’s desire both to express themselves and to satisfy an increasing demand for aesthetically pleasing products. We love the work coming from Vogel, all of which is made and sourced locally. 

Go and check out the exciting things happening at Vogel and The Foundry. We have no doubt that like us you will find many covetable items you’ll want to take home!

Open Monday-Saturday 10am – 4pm

150 Albert Road, Woodstock

The post Vogel at The Foundry appeared first on Visi.

The Woodstock Foundry is the latest addition to Albert Road’s creative community, home to an eclectic mix of retail, office, studios and workshop spaces occupied by the likes of O.Live, Lauren Fowler, Dear Ray, Opus, Selah and The Lobby, amongst others.

The centre takes its name from the works of Bronze Age, who have relocated their foundry from Simon’s Town.

“The Woodstock Foundry was envisioned as a space that would add to the creative culture in Woodstock. A place that brings the buyer closer to the maker,” says Mariah Breitenberg, who alongside her business partner at Gather, Amy Ellenbogen, was responsible for the creative consultation for the Foundry, which included curating the tenants. Mariah explains that the idea was to create a space where shoppers can buy beautiful products and at the same time see these products being made, and this is exactly what they have achieved. Most of the retail spaces double as studios and offer a front row seat of the creative processes involved in each space.   

The owners (Dan Steyn, Nick van Huyssteen, Otto du Plessis and Egon Tania) had the vision of renovating the site, which consisted of two separate buildings, into a single space with a courtyard at its center. The smaller of the two buildings, which is believed to have originally housed a bar downstairs and a brothel above, is now home to West Street Café on the ground floor with four studios atop. They’ve restored the building, which boasts a beautiful wooden staircase, wooden flooring and high ceilings, an execution that maintains its simple yet original charm.

The roof and key walls of the larger building were removed and landings and stairways installed to create two stories of interconnected spaces. The heart of the Woodstock Foundry, the courtyard, has been designed to include an array of cobblestones, bricks and plants. Carefully pieced together by hand, it boasts intricate and intriguing detail, the kind that your eye usually misses at first but ultimately leaves you pleasantly surprised once you’ve noticed it. 

We highly recommend a visit to this inspired and inspiring new development.

Open from Monday to Saturday, 10h00 to 16h00.

The post The Woodstock Foundry is now open appeared first on Visi.