Craftspeople

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie profiles master coppersmith Larry de Klerk. De Klerk's workshop dates back to the late 19th century and is a declared Provincial Heritage Site. The piece was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 14 December 2001. Click here to view more of Davie's work.

South Africa's only coppersmith is not passing on his skills to anyone and is considering giving up the craft in the next five to 10 years. 
 
“South Africans don’t appreciate crafts,” says 40-year-old Larry de Klerk, a fourth generation coppersmith operating out of the wood and iron garage attached to a house in Currey Street, Doornfontein, which was declared a national monument in 1990 (today a Provincial Heritage Site). He says he is the only coppersmith in the country.
 
“Copper is alive and with it you can put things together that no machine can do,” he says. “It is not something you can easily teach – I have been doing it for 20 years and am still learning the craft.”
 
De Klerk says his biggest challenge has been to make a copper bath. He has had orders from around the world and has made 60-70 baths. “It was only after about 15 years that I felt I had the confidence to make a bath.” A test of the craft is whether you can see a join in the bath: his baths have no visible joins. “My father said it couldn’t be done.”...

Over the holidays I was given a unique Christmas gift by my friend, Peter Digby who shares my enthusiasm for Johannesburg heritage items. It was a single old yellowed newspaper page, dated 9th November 1965, from The Star Newspaper. The page was saved in a cupboard of the Digby home because it carried an unusual story. The headline was: “Fine old stone in a new wall“. The article tells the story of a Mr Barney or Bernard Lobel (his name was actually Barnett Lobel) who rescued and saved the precision cut, dressed and shaped grey quartz and granite stone that was retrieved from the precinct and park when the Harrow Road (now Joe Slovo drive ) was widened and reconstructed in the late 1950s.   

Johannesburg walls and rocks

This yellowed fragile newspaper cutting set me thinking about Johannesburg walls and streets. If you look around the city, you will find examples of early stone and rock taken from the hilly ridges or from mining operations. Stones were quarried and it was all there for the taking. Since gold was embedded in a series of gold bearing reef and seams that ran for miles to the south of the city and descended at a 45% angle, extensive underground blasting was required and a great deal of quartz was excavated which could be used for building. Mine rocks were recycled into all sorts of structures from pioneering days. These rocks were all essential building material ahead of the making of bricks.

These...

Johannesburg hosts many fascinating treasures. Did you know bookbinding is one of Johannesburg's oldest enterprises? A bookbinders appears in an 1889 photo of our town (see below). Impressed Craft bindery connects you to that past.  

1889 Panoramic View of Johannesburg

I recently discovered this enterprise owned by Martin and Anie Ciolkosz. Their home, studio, workshop and museum is located in the quiet leafy suburb of Birdhaven, close to the Wanderers Club. They offer a craft bookbinding service and letterpress printing service. This is handcraftsmanship of the highest order. The combination of workshop/studio, museum of everything to do with the printing industry and their gallery level library comes with a whiff of a bygone age, impregnated with the smell of musty paper and linseed oil. The studio is pure vintage but it all works and is exquisitely beautiful.

The purpose built studio is located in their spacious garden and is worth seeing for the quality of its architectural design. I thought I would share my enthusiasm and delight at discovering a hidden aspect of Johannesburg. It is a museum filled with many unique 19th century printing machines and hand tools of the print and binding trade. Book decorating tools can look like “antique pizza cutters”, but don’t be fooled, these wheels make impressions and patterns on fine new goat skin binding. An old embosser continues to give ghostly impressions on thick paper. Their studio is a treasure. The website (click here to view) gives a flavour of what this...