Feel-good stories of new projects, launch parties and positivity are thin on home turf. But a ping-pong tournament to celebrate a new furniture range is an unusual and upbeat turn of events, irrespective of where in the world you lay your paddle.
The event, part of the new Cape Town Furniture Week (CTFW) took place on the roof of Always Welcome Heritage House on Heritage Square in the Cape Town CBD’s “Breecinct”.
This particular battle of the little white ball happened on a colourful, bespoke table tennis table in celebration of the new Umpire collection of outdoor furniture launched by Pedersen + Lennard.
Industrial designers Luke Pedersen and James Lennard are stalwarts of the South African furniture scene but their fun new tennis-inspired range (yes, it includes an actual umpire’s chair) has people talking. The other mild-steel pieces include a chair, tables and a bench — possibly more useful, unless you happen to be running Roland Garros or the like.
The duo took part in last year’s cheeky James Fish invitational tennis tournament, where the idea for the collection was born. Think of their launch party as the rematch.
Combining design and sport is an engaging PR tool for a product launch, but theirs is not the only recent event at Always Welcome Heritage House, nor is Umpire the only furniture range to have debuted there.
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Anyone who’s clocked the many social media posts about this will know South African furniture design is in a post-Covid upswing, and the streets around Heritage Square are at its epicentre.
Welcome signs
Garreth van Niekerk and Alan Hayward, who founded Always Welcome as a designer co-operative in 2020, must take some credit for this resurgence.
Their membership-based model gives designers a space to sell products without having to shell out for store rental, staff and other overheads. “The membership fee covers the running of the business and marketing of the brands as a collective, and we take a percentage of the sales we generate,” says Van Niekerk.
Producing furniture isn’t a cheap endeavour — raw materials, training, tech, machinery, staff and distribution add up — so this model gives growing businesses a break.
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Van Niekerk and Hayward started Always Welcome at Joburg’s Hyde Park Corner shopping centre, then moved to a large space in the Kramerville décor hub. The impressive list of designers they represent spans large-scale, established furniture makers such as Dokter and Misses and Mash.T Design Studio to youngsters including the team who produce needlework cushions at Neimil.
In late 2022, Always Welcome opened its Cape Town outpost in an elegant 18th-century building fashioned as different rooms, each filled with a mix of pieces from 40 designers. Where else will consumers see so much local furniture and homeware under one roof?
“Intrinsically our business is about getting South African design into homes here, and we measure our success by the number of homes we can convert from buying imports to supporting local,” says Van Niekerk.
“But our Cape Town store has been an amazing platform to get our brands out there to international visitors, who are all blown away by the quality and flair of Southern African design.”
Hayward and Van Niekerk also stage exhibitions and run collaborations, such as the recent “Future Heirlooms” promotion with the American Hardwood Export Council in which seven South African designers used American red oak to make clocks, cabinets, chairs and the like.
Creating a habit
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The new store is at the heart of a zone dubbed the “Breecinct”, where sustainable heritage property company Habitus is spearheading development. It’s the brainchild of Heritage Square owner Victoria Engelhorn, former Wesgro CEO Tim Harris and Vida e Caffè and And Union beer co-founder Brad Armitage.
Their combined experience in tourism, business and local politics, and a commitment to Cape Town, mean they’re approaching this development of a walkable micro-hub (the rectangle enclosed by Buitengracht, Long, Wale and Strand streets) in a way that’s not about flashy new buildings and quick money.
“The idea was to get people back into the city after Covid as soon as possible,” says Armitage. “At last count, about 150 independent retailers left the city bowl during the pandemic. It was a post-apocalyptic scene.”
Habitus has started small and is concentrating on redeveloping heritage buildings and on public initiatives such as a street mosaic project with the Spier Arts Academy. It’s also curating tenancies that will be good for the area. Always Welcome is one example, but so are architect studios, coffee shop Yebo Baba and textile store Mungo, with a loom in its basement.
Moving house
Gareth Pearson also understands the power of a walkable city.
He was one of the founders of the successful First Thursdays art movement, where galleries in Cape Town and Joburg stay open late on the first Thursday of every month and visitors walk between them and associated events. Now he’s turned his attention to design.
“There’s an incredible output of furniture being produced in the city, and we saw a need to talk about it in a cohesive way,” he says of CTFW. Developed with his partner, Aimée Wolfaardt, it ran from February 15 to 18 in the Breecinct area with events including the Umpire launch on its bill.
Guests received printed maps detailing exhibitions, participating showrooms, studio visits and launches, and they could walk to what caught their fancy.
Always Welcome displayed work by Arrange Studio, Bofred, Curación Collection, Douglas & Company and Kino, and at 61 Shortmarket Street the CTFW team put together an exhibition of new and established furniture makers, Box-Fresh. It was an opportunity to discover up-and-coming design labels such as Ex Hotel and Met Furniture Studio.
What Pearson and Wolfaardt are doing gives a shape and direction to contemporary design in the city
“The fair was such a surprise,” says Tracy Lynch, executive manager of Clout/SA and curator of the Nando’s design programme. She’s one of the team that fits out Nando’s stores locally and across the globe with South African design.
“As a platform, it was so well thought through and the quality of pieces on display was so refined and so resolved. It showed that when it comes to innovation in the use of materials, our designers never fail to impress.”
The programme was small but it coincided with the convergence of collectors, gallerists and air-kissing types who were in the city for the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. It received good support and will, no doubt, be bigger next year.
What Pearson and Wolfaardt are doing gives shape and direction to contemporary design in the city. Creating a week of exhibitions and events around the industry means brands have something to work towards and there’s a time and place where they are the focus. The public gets a considered, easily walkable route of free, curated activities.
“Platforms like CTFW bring talented individuals together to share ideas and resources, which accelerates the development of the design ecosystem, and helps to keep the community energised and inspired,” says Bielle Bellingham, creative director of Decorex Africa, 100% Design Africa and Design Joburg.
In the absence of the Design Indaba conference and exhibition, which also used to take place in Cape Town in February and provided a marketplace for South Africa’s creative industry, there is now something to fill the gap.
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