Tag Archives: Potter

Autumn 2023 at Bukkenburg

Hello and warm greetings from Bukkenburg in Swellendam as we approach the Autumn Equinox.

From the low-water crossing over the Breede River at Drew, about 25 km west of Swellendam – click to enlarge.

It has been a rather busy few months here, and we have much to share in this newsletter/blog post. Here’s hoping that you enjoy the contents.
All the pictures should enlarge with a click.

Saturday 18 March

A different sort of event this month as David and his brother John will be in conversation at Bokmakiri Books in Swellendam talking about John’s memoir
‘When They Came For Me : The Hidden Diary Of An Apartheid Prisoner’.

An earlier event to launch the book here, without John, had to be postponed due to increased Covid-19 restrictions in force at the time.

John will be in South Africa during March, taking part in the Jewish Literary Festival in Cape Town on Human Rights Day, March 21, and later for engagements in Johannesburg.

We are delighted that he will finally be here and look forward to a meaningful event in Swellendam with him, and we are most grateful to Eduan Swanepoel from Bokmakiri Books for hosting the event.

The event is open to the public and we hope to see some of you there.

The event is open to the public and all are welcome.

The Venue
Please click for: Bokmakiri Books
Shop 7
Carlton Mall
Voortrek Street
Swellendam
Tel: 083 651 5830


Context

John Schlapobersky, a student in South Africa, was arrested in 1969 for opposing apartheid, tortured through sleep deprivation and eventually deported. In solitary confinement he wrote secretly about the struggle for survival. This exquisitely written memoir is based on two hidden diaries – one in his Bible and the other on toilet paper. He reflects on the singing of the condemned prisoners and the poetry, songs and texts that saw him through his ordeal. The sense of hope through which he transformed his life guides his continuing work as a psychotherapist in the rehabilitation of others. Apartheid and its resistance come to life in this vital historical document, of its time and for our own.

Author
John is a leading psychotherapist and author based in London.
In 1985 he was a Founding Trustee of  ‘Freedom from Torture’, a human rights charity. 

His publications include ‘From The Couch To The Circle: Group-Analytic Psychotherapy In Practice’ (Routledge 2016), winner of the American Group Psychotherapy Association’s Alonso Award in 2017, now in translation to other language editions.

Endorsements:

‘An exquisitely written memoir about human endurance, survival, repair and transcendence.’ 
Justice Albie Sachs

‘An intriguing story of endurance and survival. A reminder of times, and the people who resisted them, that should never be forgotten.’ 
Gillian Slovo

‘One of the most vivid, intimate and sustained accounts yet, of the brutality that apartheid’s torturers unleashed – a remarkable book about our inhumanity and the resilience of the human spirit.’ 
Jonathan Jansen, Professor, University of Stellenbosch

‘The tale of an ordinary young man swept one day from his life into hell, testimony to the wickedness a political system let loose in its agents and, above all, an intimate account of how a man became a healer.’ 
Jonny Steinberg, Professor, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford

John has made surviving into…an act of creative protest (and) a means to bear witness for the many who did not survive.’ 
Jack Saul, Director, International Trauma Studies Program, New York.

Please click this link for – An article in The South African Jewish Report

Please click this link for – Jewish Literary Festival

Please click this link to reach the South African publisher of the book: Jonathan Ball
Please click this link for the UK publisher of the book: Berghahn Books

Norwich – 2013

Members of the extended family, UK, South Africa and USA on Zoom having received their copies of the book.

Life and work at Bukkenburg in the first months of 2023.

Such a busy time here lately!
We are pleased to report that we have at last found a solution – for our studio – to the nightmarish consequence of collapsing electricity supply that is plaguing the country.

It has involved buying a new motor for the fan and installing a Variable Speed Drive to convert our single phase backup electricity supply to the studio, to 3-phase in order to power the motor and be able to fire the kiln.

Sophisticated electrics requiring the services of a really competent electrician to make it all work together. Thankfully Swellendam is blessed with such skills!

And so thankful to have Andrew helping with the whole project.

We have fired the big kiln successfully with this new system and another glaze firing is imminent.

We are sure that it won’t be too long before things finally settle down a bit.

Family visit

Marian and Peter were here from the UK for a few days recently with their daughter Jane and her partner Jonathan. A short but wonderful visit!

Swellendam – On The Way To Everywhere

For the past few years Swellendam has been without an organised, co-ordinated tourism plan or strategy, and we appreciate what is being done by several hard working individuals in their efforts to keep the profile of the town and region visible and prominent.

The cover of the new ‘Swellendam Summer Guide – 2023’
Co-ordinated and financed by the Swellendam Municipality.
So good to have something for visitors to take away with them as they explore the town and region. We’re looking forward to the benefits from a wide distribution campaign.

Our self-catering guest cottage in the garden, shown above, is available for an overnight stay or longer.
Details and pictures on the ‘Accommodation Page’ Click Here

Summertime lunch with Andrew and James – Christina’s Bistro at van Loveren Family Vineyards, Robertson Western Cape.

The studio and gallery are open and working daily, and visitors are always welcome.
Please call ahead if travelling from afar, just to be sure that we will be here and available.

“Dedicate years to honing your craft, whatever that may be.
Creativity emerges through repetition. And whistling”

Hyme Rabinowitz

Spotted eagle owlets

With our very best wishes

David and Felicity
Bukkenburg – March 2023


Mobile & WhatsApp: +27 (0) 82 342 5453
E-mail: david@pottery.co.za

Please visit our Social Media pages:
Facebook Studio Page
Facebook – Bukkenburg Pottery
Facebook Accommodation Page
Facebook – David
Instagram

Chameleons are back in the garden in their numbers this year.

Winter 2022 at Bukkenburg

Hello and warm winter greetings from Bukkenburg in Swellendam.

Porcelain bowl – wheel thrown, faceted, turned and tooled.
Copper glaze, reduction fired to 1320 degrees C in our oil kiln.


Overall mixed blessings this winter as the country emerges from more than 800 days of varying degrees of Covid-19 lockdown, and now ongoing nation-wide power cuts affecting everyone and everything.

Multi-layered drama in the social, political and economic world as well.

Fiscal shrike on a fencing dropper in the garden.

We are thankful to have been busy in the studio lately and there is commissioned work in hand to take us through to the spring.

Winter is usually quiet here in the Southern Cape, and as usual we are using the time to get through the outstanding ordered work and also to build up a new collection of work to have in the gallery for the coming spring and summer months.

Pippa in one of her unusual, usual spots

We require at least 14 hours of uninterrupted electricity supply to power the fan on our big oil kiln to complete a firing.

Stage 6 load shedding has just begun country wide. This means that the power will be cut for about 9 1/2 hours a day at different times until further notice.

The house and some light equipment in the studio are on a backup system so we can remain productive to a point.

We’re making use of these days of load-shedding to get this blog and some other tasks done, in addition to getting pots made for the next firings.

We sincerely hope that those who are waiting for their pots will not have to wait too much longer.

Here are some pictures of what we’ve been up to recently.

Swellendam is so well situated on the N2 national road, halfway between Cape Town and the Garden Route, and we are delighted to have become an essential stop for family, friends, and customers old and new as they make their way through this part of the country.

In addition to this, we are so grateful for the continued support from people in Swellendam and surrounds.

In the pictures below:
On the left – James with his cousins Sarie, Paul, Simone, and Juliette. From Cape Town and Germany.
On right – With an old school colleague Alan Whiteside from Norwich, UK reacquainting after 52 years!
Below – a lovely visit from our niece Alice and her husband Nate who live in London.

Some tools of the trade and a productive mess

‘Swellendam – On The Way To Everywhere’

For the past few years Swellendam has been without an organised, co-ordinated tourism plan or strategy, and we appreciate what is being done by several hard working individuals in their efforts to keep the profile of the town and region visible and prominent.

Ripening canola fields and the Langeberg Mountains – winter in the Swellendam District of the Overberg Region in the Western Cape.
Stoneware platter – 47cm diameter

The big kiln is loaded with pots for the first of two bisque firings, waiting now for the power grid to stabilise.

And these will be in the the next firing …


We will be sending out information in due course about upcoming events in which we will be involved as we approach spring and summer.
Just two for now:

  • Our Potter’s Lunch and Open Studio in September ?
  • Swellendam Open Gardens over the first weekend in November.


Workshops & Classes

With the recent removal of all Covid-19 regulations, we are going to be starting some workshops and teaching sessions.
Please have a look at the ‘Workshops Page’ : Click Here

We’re hoping that the pair of breeding Spotted Eagle Owls who have been nesting nearby for the past few years will be doing so again this winter and coming spring.

Our self-catering guest cottage shown above is available for an overnight stay or longer.
Details and pictures on the ‘Accommodation Page’ Click Here

____________________________________________________________________________


Wishing you all the best

David and Felicity
Bukkenburg – June 2022

Mobile & WhatsApp: +27 (0) 82 342 5453
E-mail: david@pottery.co.za


Please visit and ‘like’ our various Social Media pages:
Facebook Studio Page
Facebook – Bukkenburg Pottery
Facebook Accommodation Page
Facebook – David
Instagram

Invitation to a Virtual Book Launch


We are pleased to invite you to join us for two online events over the next two weeks to launch the book
‘When They Came For Me – The Hidden Diary Of An Apartheid Prisoner’
by John Schlapobersky, David’s brother.

The book launch took place on Sunday 13 June 2021 in London, exactly 52 years since John’s arrest in Johannesburg.
Here is a link to the video of the launch, please click on the small image of the book cover below:

Please click on the image above to open the video of the book launch.


The first event will be a
Webinar with
Daily Maverick

In which John will be in discussion with Judge Dennis Davis

Date: Wednesday 9 June
Time: 12:00 SAST

REGISTRATION:
Click on the sunflower

You will receive confirmation by e-mail after completing the form.

______________________________________________________

The second event will be the Virtual Book Launch and celebration on Zoom, filmed and streamed live from London.

When They Came For Me
The Hidden Diary of an Apartheid Prisoner
by
John R. Schlapobersky

The author, John Schlapobersky, and publishers
Jonathan Ball Publishers and Berghahn Books 

Invite you to join us ONLINE for a

Virtual Book Launch and Celebration
Filmed and streamed live from Phoenix Theatre, King Alfred School, London

Date:
Sunday 13th June 2021

Time:
2.30 – 4.00 pm B.S.T.

Moderators:
Hannah Sherbersky and Marian Prinsley
Author’s family

Contributors:
Justice Albie Sachs
Formerly Justice, South Africa’s Constitutional Court

Gillian Slovo
Author, playwright, formerly President, British PEN in discussion with
John Schlapobersky

Marion Berghahn and Jeremy Boraine  –  publishers


REGISTRATION:
Click on the sunflower

You will receive a registration form for completion, giving you access to the
zoom event
______________________________________________________________________________



Content
John Schlapobersky, a student in South Africa, was arrested in 1969 for opposing apartheid, tortured through sleep deprivation and eventually deported. In solitary confinement he wrote secretly about the struggle for survival. This exquisitely written memoir is based on two hidden diaries – one in his Bible and the other on toilet paper. He reflects on the singing of the condemned prisoners and the poetry, songs and texts that saw him through his ordeal. The sense of hope through which he transformed his life guides his continuing work as a psychotherapist in the rehabilitation of others. Apartheid and its resistance come to life in this vital historical document, of its time and for our own.

Author
John is a leading psychotherapist and author based in London. In 1985 he was a Founding Trustee of Freedom From Torture, a human rights charity. 
His publications include From The Couch To The Circle: Group-Analytic Psychotherapy In Practice (Routledge 2016), winner of the American Group Psychotherapy Association’s Alonso Award in 2017, now in translation to other language editions.
 
‘An exquisitely written memoir about human endurance, survival, repair and transcendence.’ 
Justice Albie Sachs

‘An intriguing story of endurance and survival. A reminder of times, and the people who resisted them, that should never be forgotten.’ 
Gillian Slovo
 
‘One of the most vivid, intimate and sustained accounts yet, of the brutality that apartheid’s torturers unleashed – a remarkable book about our inhumanity and the resilience of the human spirit.’ 
Jonathan Jansen, Professor, University of Stellenbosch
 
‘The tale of an ordinary young man swept one day from his life into hell, testimony to the wickedness a political system let loose in its agents and, above all, an intimate account of how a man became a healer.’ 
Jonny Steinberg, Professor, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford
 
John has made surviving into…an act of creative protest (and) a means to bear witness for the many who did not survive.’ 
Jack Saul, Director, International Trauma Studies Program, New York.
___________________________________________________________

To order the book online outside South Africa, visit the publisher’s website:
Berghahn Books
using code JSBOOK for a 35% launch discount.

To order the book online inside Southern Africa,
(including South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia, Mozambique) visit the publisher’s website:
Jonathan Ball Publishers

______________________________________________________________________________

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out
     Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out
     Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out
     Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me”

German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

______________________________________________________________________________

We sincerely hope that some of you will be able to join in either one of these events, or perhaps both.
There is a third event being considered, to take pace in Swellendam.
Details will follow soon with our winter newsletter.

Our studio, gallery and garden in Swellendam are open and working daily, and visitors are always welcome.
Please call ahead if travelling from afar, just to be sure that we’re here and available on the day.

Wishing you all the best in good health and safety.

David and Felicity
Bukkenburg
Pottery Studio, Gallery & Guest Cottage
Swellendam
May – 2021


WhatsApp: +27 (0) 82 342 5453
E-mail: david@pottery.co.za

Summer 2021 at Bukkenburg Pottery, Swellendam

New Year Greetings from Swellendam, and a warm welcome back to Bukkenburg Pottery Studio, Gallery & Guest Cottage at the beginning of what seems to be another very turbulent and worrying year ahead.

Once again we extend our heartfelt thanks and appreciation to all who have supported our efforts over the last while; your continued support has helped us to sustain ourselves during these very trying times.

We are grateful for the commissioned work, large and small, which has so helped us work through these turbulent times, and also to those who visited the studio over the holiday season and bought something from us to take home with them.

This lovely pair of wheel-thrown stoneware planters are at their new home in Johannesburg.

Much of the past while has been spent working on a commission for very big indoor and outdoor planters.  The wet work, including some extras, is more or less done and as soon as we have the final finish and colour requirements from the client, the pots will be fired. 
We’ll also be firing the smaller commissions and orders that have come in, and also some new work for the gallery.

Overall, we are busy and productive with some ongoing work right here at home – a lot to be thankful for in these uncertain times ..!

It is alarming to hear that the rates of Covid-19 infection, hospitalization and death in our country are growing; and even in a small rural town like this, we are aware of and know people who are really suffering with the virus and some who have succumbed.

A second wave of the Coronavirus is causing such unbearable pain, suffering and hardship around the world, including our own country, and after a brief respite in ‘lockdown’ level 1 towards the end of last year, here, we are back to ‘lockdown’ level 3.

There are several local welfare and charity initiatives set up to help those who have fallen on harder times during the pandemic, providing food and comfort to those hardest hit, and the local population is always willing to spring into action when called on to help.

Local medical services are operating under increasing strain as the virus continues to spread in and around Swellendam.

This version of Level 3 ‘lockdown’ includes several severe measures which have had a devastating impact on the economy, agriculture, and an already struggling domestic travel industry over the summer.

Some of these measures and restrictions which were introduced at the beginning of the holiday season include the total closure of all beaches in our part of the world, a complete ban on all alcohol sales, night time curfew from 9.00 pm to 6.00 am, closure of land borders with neighbouring countries amongst others.

These measures and restrictions have had a specially devastating impact on the wine industry of the Western Cape, an industry that employs over 300 000 people and is central to the economy of the region.

The wine growing region in our part of the world is largely to the west of us and to the south, very close to Swellendam.

This article by winemaker Bruce Jack paints a very touching and disturbing picture of what is being faced:

CLICK HERE:
Bruce Jack on the devastating human and industry cost of Covid-19

Vineyards and the Breede River in summer near Bonnievale, Western Cape

By contrast, we hear that the grain famers of the Swellendam district have had a very good harvest, and things are looking promising for them, which will have a beneficial impact on the town.  We wrote about this in our September newsletter, before the harvest came in, and if you scroll down, you will find it there.

Wheat fields near Riviersonderend after the harvest.

In our immediate area we are seeing growing unemployment, poverty and misery all around us, and daily there are people ringing our door bell asking for something to do, a ‘piece job’, just to get something to eat.
Others desperately asking for a sandwich.

According to Statistics SA, more than 17 million South Africans, one in five, rely on social welfare grants from the state; and even in this small rural town there are unbelievably long queues of desperate people standing in line for their welfare grant payments on their designated days.


Our own strategy for now involves going out as seldom as possible with masks and hand sanitizer, and only for those things we really need; there are bottles of sanitizer around the house, gallery, studio, and cottage; washing hands etc etc, and most specially staying away from busy or crowded places if we can.

As expected, visitor numbers are significantly down on previous years, and the usual flow of foreign travelers to this part of the world seems to have almost dried up completely for now. 

It is doubtful that we’ll experience any real return of travellers to our region until there are enough vaccinated people who feel confident to travel again, and that seems to be a long way off.

The summer months have brought a slow, steady flow of visitors to the studio, and we have been fortunate to have also had several bookings in the cottage over the holiday season.

Accommodation at the Studio

Our guest cottage is available for an overnight stay or longer.

For further information please have a look at our accommodation page where there are pictures and a full description of what is available.

Please CLICK HERE

Spring / Summer 2020/21

And as the year begins to get underway, we are again experiencing ongoing nation-wide power cuts – called ‘load shedding’ here.
Sometimes two or even three 2 1/2 hour events a day.
Not easy dodging these cuts in electricity supply and still remaining productive and upbeat !

It’s harder now to imagine where the leadership will come from to help change direction here towards something more positive.
This article written by Marianne Merten in the Daily Maverick this week provides a sobering look at what the coming year might hold for this country:
CLICK HERE:

Sadly, due to the curfew this year, we were unable to take our stroll through town late on New Year’s Eve and make our by now traditional ‘Abbey Road Crossing’ over the main street.

Here’s a picture from last year’s walk:

Huge excitement during the summer when a pair of Spotted Eagle Owls hatched two eggs in a hollow in an oak tree right here in our neighbour’s garden.
Needless to say they provided the best photo opportunity imaginable. Here are some of the pictures of one of the adults and the two owlets:

Spotted Eagle Owl – one of the parents

We have found the available digital communications and media reassuring during the lock-down period, and like so many, we have been able to stay in touch with family, friends and customers around the country and the world.
Within the next month or so we will be hooked up to the internet with the newly installed fibre network in town and we’re looking forward to high-speed, trouble-free communications.
The paperwork is all done, and now we wait for the area to go ‘live’.

Our social media accounts on Facebook and Instagram have become essential tools in our working and social lives.

Please visit and ‘like’ our Social Media links:
Facebook Studio Page
Facebook – Bukkenburg Pottery
Facebook Accommodation Page
Facebook – David
Instagram

We have a new e-mail address: david@pottery.co.za
Please add it to your address books, the old one will be phased out over time.

The studio, gallery and garden are open and working daily, and visitors are welcome.
Please call ahead if travelling from afar, just to be sure that we’re here and available on the day.

Wishing you all the best in good health and safety as we begin the new year.

Please take care of yourselves and each other ..!

David and Felicity
Bukkenburg – Swellendam
January – 2021

WhatsApp: +27 (0) 82 342 5453
E-mail: david@pottery.co.za

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you

Ralph Waldo Emerson