Celebrated international designers are collaborating with South African crafters and designers at Africa’s international design fair, GUILD, in Cape Town.

The fair, currently on at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, is considered a fillip for South African designers, who are attracting global interest.

“We’re holding our own against the best design in the world,” fair director Trevyn McGowan said this week.

This year, the legendary Los Angeles-based Haas Brothers are premiering their new locally produced collection at GUILD.

They’ve been working with South Africa’s well-known beading company, Monkeybiz and Bronze Age Foundry to produce, ‘Afreaks’ an exhibition of animal-like forms named satirically after celebrities, like Tail-lor Swift and Al Gor-illa.

“Our historical craft is being used in groundbreaking ways by the top designers in the world,” McGowan told Engineering News Online.

Monkeybiz is working with Haas Brothers in a three- to four-year project, creating full-time employment for women crafters in South Africa.

McGowan said various collaborations with internationally-recognised  designers would have a significant impact for the global profile of local companies, while the interest  in South African design had the potential to grow this sector of the economy.

She added that design exports from South Africa were doubling every year, with overseas buyers showing particular interest.

The most expensive piece on exhibition at the GUILD design fair is expected to fetch R700 000.

Renowned New York gallery R & Company has returned to the Design Fair for a second year, while siblings, Mary-Lynn and Carlo Massoud, from Beirut, Lebanon have joined forces with Capetonian ceramicists and metalworkers for their body of work.

Frederik Molenschot from the Netherlands has worked with Swazi women to create a series of four works, called ‘Sleeping Swaziland’ including one made with woven sisal.

“By working together with a group of wonderful women from Swaziland, we removed the distance between my studio in the Netherlands and the workshop in Swaziland. The manner of production and the used material intensify the subject of the work and make it into a very site-specific piece; in and about Swaziland,” commented Molenschot.

South African sculptor Mambakwedza Mutasa is exhibiting his huge but intricate chair in the shape of a hand. “To me, it’s like the ‘Hand of God’ – like the Creator holding you in the palm of his hand,” said Kwedza. The sculptor, who works from a studio in Hout Bay, Cape Town, uses recycled wood and says he has been passionate about his work ever since he left school 25 years ago.

Kwedza’s exhibit forms part of the artisan side of the fair and is staged by Watershed at the V & A Waterfront, where South African design and craft is on sale.

A fusion of traditional craft skills and contemporary design is also on display in wirework designs under the Zenzelu name. Designer Marisa Fick-Jordaan started her initiative with telephone wire weavers in an informal settlement in Durban. The project has grown to include 350 home-based craft producers in four different countries.

The GUILD design fair, which attracted worldwide acclaim and over 8 500 visitors during its inaugural fair during the Word Design Capital year in Cape Town last year, is on until March 1.