Cape Town ceramicist Ceri Muller

The Cape Town Ceramicist Making Crinkled Vases and Clay Faces

Here’s a tip for anyone suffering from the fear of starting something creative: Make the ugliest thing you can think of. That’s the genius bit of advice that ceramics artist Ceri Muller’s partner gave her when she felt blocked, faced with her first lump of clay. “I did that and carried on doing it and those ugly little things morphed into these heads that I grew to really love,” she says.
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Bofred Cape Town design studio

An Earthy New Furniture Collection, Inspired By the South African Coastline

There’s a lot that separates Muscat, Oman’s port capital, and Durban on the east coast of South Africa. But it’s their similarities that have inspired the new Bask Collection by up and coming South African design studio Bofred. Christa Botha and Carla Erasmus are the design duo behind Bofred, whose concept of home is an eclectic mix of the two coastal cities where they feel most relaxed and inspired.
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Cape Town Ceramicist Jade Paton’s Quirky Hand-Formed Vessels

Ceramic artist Jade Paton’s parents own a well-known florist in Cape Town where she’s spent many hours working, twisting bouquets, and building installations. It’s fitting then that she now uses her hands to make vessels that look particularly wonderful when filled with flowers. But don’t be mistaken — her ceramic pieces are equally inspired by her background in sculpture during her studies in fine art and would hold their own in a white cube. “I believe that the boundaries between art and design are more blurred than ever before,” she says. “I like that my pieces feel both functional and sculptural.”
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This Cape Town Designer Makes Velvet Couches and Stone Tables Inspired By the Moon

The first piece of furniture interior designer Mia Senekal ever designed was like something out of Game of Thrones. “I have to laugh,” she says. “It was in college.” The complicated chair made of strips of hooped iron now lives in her mom’s garden with ivy growing all around it. With its rounded curves and luxurious upholstery, her first furniture collection released under the brand name murrmurr is acres more elegant.
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The 21-Year-Old Cape Town Ceramicist Making Art Inspired By Gay Love

Under the name Nebnikro, Cape Town-based artist Ben Orkin makes lumpy and unusual ceramic vessels inspired by gay love. “I hope through my work to express the beauty of gay love in a world which mostly sees it as unnatural, destructive, and dangerous,” he says. His organic shapes are often symmetrical to reflect the connecting of two bodies — either physically or emotionally, or both.
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The Cape Town Artist Making 3D Renders of Our Personal Paradise

Five years ago, Alexis Christodoulou was a copywriter at an ad agency, hating his job and looking for some sort of creative release. Intrigued by a friend using SketchUp, the 3D-modeling program, Christodoulou taught himself how to use it and a whole new world suddenly opened for the Cape Town–based artist. Obsessed, he began putting all of his time into these renderings — desaturated, pastel worlds full of reflective pools, strong shapes, and the best kind of shadow-making light.
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The Cool Girl Cape Town Jewelry Brand At the Top of Our Wish List

Called Waif, the line is a labor of love by former ad woman and self-taught jewelry designer Gisele Human, who we've been assiduously following on Instagram, waiting for news of a new collection to drop. We got our wish this week when Human unveiled her Technicolor Melodrama collection, in which many pieces mix Human's signature metals with stones like malachite, sodalite, and Dalmatian jasper.
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Pink Travertine and Rusty Velvet in a Coolly Minimalist Cape Town Boutique

On a recent family trip to Cape Town, I determined to go to the best restaurant in the city, to revisit to my favorite beach hangout (Beta), and, thanks to a hot tip from a friend's Instagram, to pop in on a store that can only be described as #sosightunseen. The eponymous boutique of fashion designer Margot Molyneux, the shop opened at the end of last year, showcasing the brand's minimal-chic designs — in a color palette of peach, green, rust, white, and black — with a store design by Molyneux's husband to match.
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