Български форум за дизайн

Nic Bladen creates delicate casts of local vegetation called Fynbos (fine shrubbery). He originally worked as a dental technician, but decided to pursue a different path, becoming a sculptor and then a jewelery designer. He uses the principles of the lost wax casting technique to transform flowers, twigs and leaves into unique earrings, pendants and necklaces.

I loved Lyall Sprong’s range of “ambiguous, ordinary objects” that he created to challenge our pre-conceived ideas about materials. Pieces in the range use various trompe l’oeuil techniques to make pieces of furniture that puzzle and amuse.

I’m not much of a jewelery person, but Tiffany Marx’s rock rings caught my eye. I loved the way the angularity of the cuts in the stone were carried through into the body of the ring.

Frauke Stegmann is a graphic designer and ceramicist. Her hand-made pieces take inspiration from the locally (in)famous Milnerton Boot Market, where the wide range of knick-knacks and kitsch memorabilia can be found. She then reconstitutes these found objects in porcelain and uses them in her pieces.

For those who enjoy re-upholstering retro classics, you must check out Casamento. They rescue old classics from auctions and small dorpies (that’s the Afrikaans word for tiny towns in the middle-of-nowhere) and then bring them back to life by re-upholstering them and finishing off selected pieces with amazingly detailed hand-embroidery.

I definitely want one of Cornelius Lemmer’s “Dolly Pots” on my shelf. He studied industrial design in Cape Town and now spends him time producing an array of quirky products from his studio in one of the city’s industrial meccas. No two Dolly Pots are the same, as each is carefully personalised in some small way.

Fabric designs in the Ekoka range ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) were created at workshops held with the !Kung Bushmen tribe who live on the border of Namibia and Angola. The resulting artworks are then turned into fabric designs. A share of the profits from the sale of these beautifully patterned materials then goes back to the Bushmen in royalties.

from notcot.org