Quintessentially African Mash T Designs

BLURRING THE LINES BETWEEN OLD AND NEW

Consisting of a retail gallery and events activation program, Always Welcome travels to retail environments enlivening and activating unused shopfronts and spaces with contemporary South African design for limited periods

The Always Welcome cooperative is founded by leading South African designers and manufacturers in collaboration with Garreth van Niekerk and Alan Hayward from creative consultancy Coraltree Projects.

The space they have designed is modular and updateable, and the curation changes throughout the run of the nomadic retail environment to foreground different designers, their work and headspace. Nomadic Retail is for design goods and consists of a retail gallery and events activation program, Always Welcome travels to retail environments enlivening and activating unused shopfronts and spaces with contemporary South African design for limited periods.

A SEAT AT THE TABLE

Always Welcome is a growing community of some of Southern Africa’s most talented designers, craftspeople, and big-thinkers. Amongst them they have won every Most Beautiful Object, and Designer of the Year, and Icon award you can imagine. But they’re more than just great designers. They’re people who believe that together we can do more than we can do seperately, and that’s the sort of thinking that is growing Always Welcome into a design force which shows no sign of slowing down.

Members of Always Welcome include, Coco-Mat, Coral Stephens, Dokter and Misses, Gone Rural, House of Gozdawa, Houtlander, Indigenus Planters, Inland Collective, Jan Ernst, Joe Paine, Kirsten Goss, Lothar Bottcher, Mash T, Okra Candles, Orlando Lighting, SMTNG Good Studio, The Urbanative, Trevor Stuurman, Voster & Braye, Wessel Snyman and Wanderland Collective. thought might work in the space.

www.alwayswelcome.store

Quintessentially African aesthetic

Mash.T designs are a result of passion for working with artisans that have mastered traditional skills such as weaving and beading.

Say hi to Alfred’s Light, our new line of telewire pendants. At Mash.T we love to collaborate, and for these beauties they have teamed up with Elizabeth Joubert of Tin Lab designs and renowned telewire weaver, Alfred Ntuli.

We’ve long had their eye on the craft of telewire weaving, and are thrilled to finally showcase this artform in their product range. In the late 1960s, Zulu night watchmen started weaving scraps of telephone wire around their traditional sticks. The practice became popular among Zulu communities, and today there is great innovation and creativity in the use of this medium.

Alfred Ntuli is best known for his diamond-patterned, traditionally shaped pots with lids. They were so grateful that bab’ Alfred agreed to work with them, as these designs saw quite a deviation from his usual work. Not only are these pendants on a larger scale, but they also bring in more pattern than his usual, restrained aesthetic. Alfred not only rose to the challenge, but exceeded it. As usual, nothing we do is ever just a single person’s efforts. From the management team at Bambizulu, who connected them with bab’ Alfred, to the artisans at African Art Centre, who helped produce the pendants, and their collaborator, Elizabeth Joubert, whose idea it was to create a telewire pendant, the final product is a community effort - a result of everyone’s hearts and skills coming together.

Big news in the Mash.T Design Studio: their new website is live! They are always trying to make Mash.T more accessible, and,creating an e-commerce store was a great way of doing this. Firstly, they don’t want you to have to jump through hoops to buy our products, and now you can easily shop otheir products online. But perhaps more importantly, they wanted to be able to introduce you to their studio and to the artisans theycollaborate with. They are hoping that now, because you can meet the team on their website, when you interact with them on social media, send them an email or see a product image in your favourite publication, you’ll know that there are real people behind the products. Please pop in and say hi at their new online home.

Shop Alfred’s Light here.