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David and Felicity – an update

A Love for Life, People and fine Studio Pots

We have been making pots since the early 1973, and began while house-parents at Cresset House, a Camphill School and Training Centre for children in need of special care, in Halfway House north of Johannesburg during 1972, where we were also responsible for the dairy, vegetable garden, bakery and a house of 12 young trainees. It was here that we came into contact with the well-known artist and Studio Potter Tim Morris who was instrumental in helping us establish a pottery studio at the school.

By 1976 we moved back into Johannesburg together with Felicity’s three young sons, the oldest, James being severely brain damaged due to a motor accident at the age of four.

It was in Parkwood and then Parkview in Johannesburg that we established our own studio and set about making and firing a wide range of high temperature, reduction-fired stoneware and porcelain in what has become known as the ‘Anglo-Oriental Tradition’. Our work was generally well-received and our support base of customers grew.  It was a time of great enterprise and activity in the studio. We built our first 100 cu ft gas fired kiln ourselves,  exhibited our pots widely and we were also beginning to be ‘noticed’ by several galleries, landscape and interior designers as well as collectors of hand-made studio pottery. Numerous solo and group exhibitions and commissions followed.

During the 1980’s and early 1990’s we were instrumental in the formation of the Johannesburg Studio Route and were also involved for many years in the Alexandra Art Centre.

Felicity’s mother Ruth Wolff, a highly respected leader in the architectural, interior design and décor industry in Johannesburg for more than forty years had a great influence on our work using our work on many of her projects and a number of her clients from the early days still approach us for new work.

It was during the early 1990’s that we began to plan for a different life of making our pots away from the city in rural Western Cape and at the end of 1996 moved into our present home and studio in the historic house Bukkenburg in Swellendam together with Felicity’s mother and son James.

OUR LIFE IN SWELLENDAM

Our move to Swellendam in 1996 was a natural extension of our life together.  The search for a quiet country town close to the mountains and the sea but not too far from a big centre had been going on for many years.  The environment in which we now live is reflected in our current work which has benefited from technical innovations - such as the move from gas to oil-fired (paraffin) kilns allowing us to introduce subtle and exciting effects.

Our life together has always involved the care of James.  He has grown into an endearing and attractive person and his dependence on us has dictated a way of life which we have been able to combine with the work of a studio pottery at home.  Here in Swellendam we have a developing garden of flowers and vegetables in which we grow much of our own produce and we have enough land for a small flock of sheep. The vegetable garden provides a wonderful selection of produce and we regularly supply local people and restaurants with our own ‘naturally-grown’ salads and vegetables. The rhythm of James’ needs, of the making and firing of our pots, of feeding the sheep and tending to the garden, are part of a life cycle whose integrity is reflected in our work.

Alongside all of this, and for several years, we were active in promoting and facilitating aspects of integrated local development, community interaction and tourism in Swellendam and the surrounding area.

Swellendam is located in the Overberg region of the Western Cape at the foot of a dramatic mountain range, the Langeberg, (long mountains) that bring abundant rain to the region.  The excellent climate and lush vegetation made the region home to the earliest human inhabitants of the continent - the San and Khoi peoples - and later to European settlers who constructed the third oldest of South Africa’s magisterial districts.  It remains a wonderful pastoral setting for people, plants and animals.

The house and property, “Bukkenburg”, located in the heart of the old part of the town, was built more than 100 years ago in the Cape Victorian style.  Our renovations and developments are intended to create an environment in which family, friends and visitors find themselves welcome.

We have not abandoned our exhibition drive and will be preparing for another Johannesburg exhibition and other venues as well, as soon as we can fit it into our schedule.

It is more than 37 years since we began making pots, 13 of them in Swellendam, and we are constantly rewarded and excited by the possibilities that studio pottery still has for us. Our Open Studio events have developed into something quite special over the eleven years since we began them and we now hold three such events each year, usually hosting others from the arts and craft community. We are grateful to those who have supported our efforts over the years and look forward to welcoming many back here and new visitors as well.

“Time is what stops everything from happening at once”

Albert Einstein