An Organic Landscape

Ceramic artist Jan Ernst de Wet has fashioned a unique collection that speaks to his wonder with the natural world

TEXT TRACY LYNN CHEMALY PHOTOGRAPHS GREG COX, JACOBUS SNYMAN, LAAIK

When a boy grows up on a farm, there’s often an unwritten expectation that he will one day tend the land himself. Although Jan Ernst de Wet was raised on farmlands from the Free State to the Eastern Cape, he does not play by such rules of tradition.

In fact, he creates a fictional landscape of his own design, shaped by these immersive moments spent in nature. His land is a creative one, defined by whimsical forms of clay, inspired by caves, mountains, ocean creatures, plants and fungi.

“Nature is everyone’s — it’s part of the human experience,” Jan says of his muse. This is perhaps the reason his ceramic work is captivating people even beyond our borders, with universal shapes portrayed in pieces such as Veld, Sea and Forest candelabras. Even his latest Womb collection expresses a natural occurrence understood by everyone: the narrative of birth.

The shapes of these hanging lights and wall sconces mimic the Cederberg’s Stadsaal Caves — “Caves that gave life to some of the first people,” says Jan, connecting nature to the human experience.

That the artist began his journey with ceramics just two years ago during lockdown and is now represented by four international galleries is a trajectory rarely seen in collectible design. It began with an entry into Nando’s Hot Young Designer competition

‘Nature is everyone’s — it’s part of the human experience’

Jan Ernst de Wet with one of his Womb lamps

Jan Ernst de Wet’s Womb sconce, inspired by the Cederberg

in 2020. Jan has a degree in architecture, and was practising under Studio AN. At the time, work had come to a pandemicinduced halt and so Studio AN dared to design its first piece of furniture for the competition, landing up in the top 10 for its hand-painted steel bench.

Jan so enjoyed that experience of making a functional, 3D object that he was soon experimenting with clay, a material he found most suitable to realising his ideas in the quickest way possible. With little formal training, he pushes the medium — creating forms, textures and functionality that are seldom seen in this fragile material. “I’ve been told that my saving grace is that I think I can do anything with clay,” he laughs. He proved this last year by producing a bench in collaboration with ceramic studio Vorster & Braye.

Jan’s poetic approach to ceramics — whether metre-tall “walking” candelabras, cavernous table lamps or seedpod vessels that house tiny stems — lends itself to an addictive Instagram page. It’s there that he was discovered by Bordeaux-based Galerie Revel, and later by Galerie Philia in New York, Collectional in Dubai and Mia Karlova Galerie in Amsterdam.

He is now pursuing a residency with Galerie Revel, using his architectural skills to explore the topography of the wine regions of Bordeaux and the Western Cape, and reinterpret this as a wall installation in clay. Thereafter work will begin on a collaboration with Mexican designer and stone sculptor Andrés Monnier.

It would seem that Jan’s landscape is prospering. In this world of his imagination, where borders do not exist and traditions can be defied, a pasture of organic design is sprouting. O

‘I’ve been told that my saving grace is that I think I can do anything with clay’

Pieces by Jan Ernst de Wet in collaboration with Vorster & Braye at the Right Here Right Now exhibition RIGHT Jan’s Womb pendants

‘I’ve been told that my saving grace is that I think I can do anything with clay’ ‘I’ve been told that my saving grace is that I think I can do anything with clay’