About Wonki Ware

I live in a small town called George which is situated along the Garden Route in South Africa. I started a small studio in the town centre about 20 years ago, purely to keep myself occupied while my children were at school. We lived on a farm at the time and had to travel into town everyday. I thought it would be a good idea to work in my pottery studio in town in the morning, then collect my children and go back to the farm in the afternoon. I happily started working and slowly attracted the attention of the local community. Before long, my little studio became a meeting place for other potters and people that enjoyed being creative. At around the same time, a young Xhosa man named Artwell Lulamile Mthonjeni started arriving every morning looking for work. I was not generating much income at that stage to be able to pay him, but he was willing to do anything. I started teaching him about clay. I devised a method of making pottery that Artwell could replicate from the shapes that I had originally created. To our delight, he started producing very sensitively worked platters and bowls. I began developing patterns that were relatively easy and simple to reproduce but at the same time capturing a sensitivity in pattern and design.Read their story