The History

The interaction between the Swedish, American and South African teachers and the black South African students at the ELC made for a complex set of artistic exchanges and cross-cultural influences. The exact nature of the influences brought to bear would obviously have varied depending on the particular teachers. However it is a recurring phenomenon that white art teachers from Europe and South Africa, working in the African context, often insist that they have imposed as little as possible and concentrated on teaching technique, 'allowing natural talent to surface'. Walter Battiss, in an article on the Centre, describes this relationship thus:
The Centre, directed since 1968 by Otto Lundbohm, is the result of a unique and successful venture in cross-cultural art and craft production - a delicate combination of Swedish technical assistance and traditional African design and skill, although it is planned that the entire operation will gradu­ally be turned over to the Africans.
The duality of the old and the new, traditional and technological, western and African, were inscribed in the stated aims of the Centre:
To nurture the unique artistic heritage of Africa. To extend this heritage with new influences so that it will find its rightful place in an evolving and changing society.

To ensure that it develops with the changing society and that its arts and crafts will find increasingly profitable outlets. To assist in raising their standard of living by extending it's teaching influence through its students and by giving local people work and an income.

The ELC Art and Craft Centre were started in 1962 by Peder and Ulla Gowenius. This arose out of a committee formed in 1961 in Stockholm, Sweden, for the advancement of African art and craft. As a result of this initiative Peder and Ulla Gowenius were sent to South Africa to work at the Ceza Mission Hospital, Zululand. Here they met Azaria Mbatha(*) and Allina Khumalo (now Allina Ndebele) both of whom were sent to Sweden for further studies, Allina in 1964 and Azaria in 1966. During 1962 the ELC Art School Committee was formed in Natal and the ELC Art and Craft Centre was opened at Umpumulo (Mapumulo) in the same year. The purpose of its programme at this early stage was to prepare women students as art and craft advisors to work with patients in hospitals. Financially this was made possible through capital raised by an exhibition of traditional art and craft; TB patients made the work as therapy at Ceza Mission Hospital in Zululand (these included linocuts by Azaria Mbatha). The profit from this exhibition totalled R6000 and was used to give the centre its first home at Umpumulo. The Church of Sweden Mission took responsibility for the salaries of the first teachers at the centre, Peder and Ulla Gowenius.

In 1963 the Art and Craft Centre moved to Rorke’s Drift and occupied some existing disused buildings: In the late 1950s Rorke’s Drift farm of 5000 acres was proclaimed White Land and thus making all the people staying on the farm Squatters, and soon after the Lutheran Theological Seminary was moved to Umpumulo leaving all its buildings empty for the Church to divide between the Circuit Centre, the Emseni Old Aged Home and the ELC Art and Craft Centre.

When the Art and Craft Centre moved to the empty buildings at Rorke’s Drift in 1963 a loan (later repaid) of approximately R6000 was received from the Church of Sweden Mission. An exhibition in Stockholm in late 1963 enabled further funds to be generated for extensions to the existing buildings. It is extremely important to note that the financial reports up to 1971 indicate that the Centre was able to provide for many of its financial needs. It appears that substantial profits generated by the weaving section paid for the running of the school, including the fine art department and the pottery and textile printing workshops.
Looking at a summary financial report for the years 1964 to 1971, it is interesting to note that the sales of work in South Africa increased as the sales abroad decreased. However an enormous quantity of work was sold abroad, and it is therefore difficult to get a complete impression of the range of work produced. What is evident is that without the initial support from the Swedes, and the marketing of work in Stockholm and other parts of Europe and America, it would not have been possible to sustain this most important art centre.

The centrality of the weaving workshop in this process cannot be over-estimated. The manner in which this workshop developed is partially accounted for in this description by Battiss:
The leaders, Jessie Dlamini and Allina Ndebele, encourage artistic independence in each student or apprentice ... Each selects his [her] colors and creates his [her] own design: no design is ever re-used, although occasionally another artist may freely reinterpret one... The tapestries... usually incorporate figurative images based on folklore, the Bible, or important events.
One of the major commissions received by the weavers workshop was a tapestry (3m x 5.5m) for the renovated Council Chambers of the Royal Society, London.
Allina Ndebele, who had been a nurse at the Ceza Mission Hospital, started as an interpreter for the Gowenius couple and went on to be trained as a weaver. She received training in Sweden and became the master weaver, directing all the teaching of learner weavers and in the words of a catalogue dedicated to her work, " establishing a weaving workshop which gave work to destitute mothers".

It is important to understand the Art and Craft Centre in terms of issues of gender. To a large extent almost exclusively one or other sex practised the different art forms: weaving by women, apart from some designs by men; fine art by men, apart from a few women; and the ceramic workshop in which both men and women worked, but where two approaches developed: Dinah Molefe, with a small group of women, continued the female tradition of making pottery by the coil method; while the men, under the guidance of Gordon Mbatha, used the kick-wheel.
This issue was taken further in a distinction between 'useful' and other arts. In unpublished biographical notes by Brenda Danilowitz this dichotomy is made evident:
Through Gowenius, [Azaria] Mbatha became interested in drawing, although this was not a technique encouraged at the centre, which focussed on the more "useful" arts such as weaving and fabric printing, practised mainly by women. In fact, in the first years of the Centre's existence, Mbatha appears to have been one of the only male artists working there. Aside from his drawing, his work at this time also involved creating designs for tapestries, which were woven by the women and for which the centre soon achieved great fame.

However this notion of 'usefulness' did not prevent the ceramicists from experimenting with new forms. All the ceramics produced are stoneware and although a great deal of the work produced is functional, there are examples of work, in particular by Dinah Molefe and Elizabeth Mbatha, that use the basic vessel shape to produce purely sculptural forms. This practice has continued to evolve at the Katlehong Art Centre, where two ex- Rorke’s Drift artists, Bhekisani Manyoni and Ephraim Ziqubu have worked for the past decade. Manyoni too has used the ceramic vessel as the starting point for sculptural works depicting warthogs. When one compares the art with the craft produced at the Centre there appears to have been a consistent sharing and borrowing of imagery. Artists produced designs for tap­estries and participated in the ceramics workshops. Azaria Mbatha designed tapestries; Ziqubu produced ceramics, linocuts and designed a tapestry that was sent to the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1973. The ongoing interaction between the school, where fine art was taught, and the workshops, where craft was produced, was an important phenomenon in the history of South African art.

written by:
RORKE'S DRIFT: "Empowering Prints" (Philippa Hobbs & Elisabeth Rankin)