At Te Water House in the centre of Graaff-Reinet, the smell of freshly baked bread lingers as locals sit on the stoep over coffee and road-trippers stop by as they pass through town.

Jen Rubidge dips in and out of conversations, Roo, her Goldendoodle, close on her heels. It is a place where people come together easily and stay longer than planned.

Once the antique shop of Jen’s grandmother, the historical house off Church Street has been restored and reopened as a gathering place where a bakery and second-hand shop, along with a small creative tribe, bring new energy to its old rooms.

Its yellowwood beams and thick walls have seen generations come and go. Built in 1818 by Lord Charles Somerset for magistrate Andries Stockenström, the home later passed to the Te Water Naudé family, whose name it still carries. Over time, other Karoo families left their mark here, before Eira Maasdorp acquired the property some 40 years ago and ran her antique shop from its rooms.

The sprawling old house started whispering to Jen while she was sorting through her grandmother’s antiques for an auction.

“As we were moving through it, dusting her off, the old dame started chatting to me. We were opening doors I had never seen before, discovering rooms I didn’t even know were there.”

It was in that process that the idea took hold. “I started imagining what we could fill her with,” Jen says. “She was just too beautiful and held such a calming energy.”

When the auction was over, Jen shared her ideas with her family. “They said I had to give it a try.”

Eight months of restoration followed. The work was careful rather than dramatic, guided by the structure itself. Yellowwood floors, beams and ceilings were revealed, rooms cleared and the building was allowed to breathe again.

A year on, the house has settled into a new rhythm – light-filled and in use.

What has taken shape is a space defined by people as much as by the building itself. The bakery draws locals and visitors in from the street. Your Local Pantry’s shelves nearby are stocked with grass-fed beef, Karoo lamb from the Camdeboo, organic vegetables and goat’s milk cheese, while the Little Victory thrift store continues the circulation of objects.

Lot 44, Jen’s own mid-century furniture store, sits alongside an eclectic mix produced by local designers: textiles and clothing made of mohair and wool, each adding to a growing sense of exchange within the house.

The space is also used for workshops, cultural events and exhibitions.

For Jen, it is a place to connect. Somewhere locals and visitors meet, where ideas can be explored and where local artisans and creatives can find a foothold in the town.

“I wanted to establish a platform for small creative businesses to grow and where ideas can be tested,” she says. “It sounds simple, but in Graaff-Reinet it fills a gap.”

There is, too, a continuity that runs beneath it all. Jen grew up on Wellwood farm, surrounded by many generations of family history and the fossil collection assembled by her great-grandfather, Sidney Rubidge. At the time, she says, it felt ordinary. Only later did she understand the weight of it.

That sense of inheritance now sits quietly in the house. Not as something preserved behind glass, but as something lived.

Te Water House has become what it perhaps always was at heart: a place where people meet, linger and return.

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Between the walls of the Wellwood sheep kraal stands a small gabled building that has had more than one life. First it was the farm dairy. Later it was transformed into a home for the remarkable Rubidge Fossil Collection. And now, Anika Lötter is at work here.

For decades, the old Dexter dairy held Sidney Rubidge’s fossil collection. Its glass cabinets were filled with hundreds of skulls that drew scientists and visitors from around the world.

After almost a century of being curated by four generations of Rubidge farmers, the fossils have now been moved from Wellwood to Karoo Origins – The Fossil Centre in Graaff-Reinet. There they continue to tell the story of how a farmer’s discoveries changed our view of prehistoric life.

The purpose-built display cabinets, lined with red felt, remain on Wellwood. But what they hold now is different.

At her bench, Anika works with a small blowtorch, heating and shaping brass, turning it carefully with a pair of tongs. She wears a leather apron, bent over her work. Files and pliers lie within reach, alongside a chisel and saw.

Around her are her materials: a lock of mohair, a twist of wool, pieces of rock and wood, seeds, scrap metal. Behind her, her work rests in the old glass cabinets. A playlist runs quietly; through the window, a flock of merinos moves towards the kraal.

In 1956, Sidney Rubidge, farmer turned fossil-hunter, wrote, “Possibly the first impression a visitor would obtain of my little ‘museum’ is the sheer incongruity of its very existence on a Karoo farm, where normal activities concern themselves with the breeding of merino sheep.”

For Anika, the little museum belongs here.

The young jewellery and textile designer married into the Rubidge family a year ago. Her husband Richard – great-grandson of Sidney – is the sixth generation to farm Wellwood.

Her own story goes back to a mohair and wool farm near Pearson in the eastern Karoo, where the Lötters have been farming for seven generations. “It sounds like a long time,” she says, “but here it isn’t. Not if you consider that the fossils in this area date back 250 million years.

“When I was a little girl, my dad would take me out for drives in the veld. He’d show me the plants the animals like, the sweet ones. Riding on horseback, I would help bring in the sheep for shearing. I’d hear that we need rain. My sister and I would play in the river and make vases from clay for our boma, decorating them with grasses.”

It feels natural that a child of the Karoo would go on to create from it. After finishing school in Bloemfontein, she studied visual arts at Stellenbosch University, where her interest in Karoo materials began to take shape. “While I was studying, I started working with natural elements from the Karoo and became interested in the fossil history of the area,” she says. “The more I learnt, the more my idea of time and place began to shift.”

She completed her master’s degree in 2024 and returned to the Karoo, settling into the old fossil museum on Wellwood. The connection was immediate. “It felt like a full-circle moment.”

Her work follows what is available. Wood, shale, wool, plant material – things gathered from the farm and the surrounding veld. The pieces are shaped by the material itself, its texture and structure.

“It matters what we choose to make things from,” she says. “It changes how we relate to what we wear and how we think about where it comes from.

“I love the way natural materials hold memory and tell stories. The grain in wood records how it has grown, the crimp of wool is a diary of the animal’s health.”

What she creates shifts with the landscape. Scorching summers leave the veld dry and stripped back. Rain brings colour. Wind carries seeds and cat’s tail grass that catch in the wool of the sheep.

“There is a deep sense of time here,” she continues. “You realise the landscape has been here long before you. I like that feeling.”

Anika believes we can choose which materials we work with, what we wear. “In today’s industrialised world,” she says, “there is something very special about creating things out of slow material in an ancient place like the Karoo.”

She is currently working on a new collection, more colourful, more wearable, with a strong emphasis on weaving and craft. It is a new body of work for a little museum that once held the story of the ancient Karoo, and now continues the story in a different way. 

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From a mudstone koppie just north of Graaff-Reinet, the Karoo opens out in vast flatlands beneath the Sneeuberg. Here, on the farm Wellwood, anker-karoobossies cling to the soil, their dust-grey leaves blending with the earth. Underfoot, slabs of weathered stone lie scattered across the veld.

At first glance the landscape feels sparse, almost empty.

Yet 250 million years ago the plains teemed with life. Rivers meandered through forests of Glossopteris and spread across wide floodplains. Herds of tusked dicynodonts crowded muddy waterholes, heads down, beaks working steadily through ferns.

Something moved in the reeds. A gorgonopsian, sabre-toothed and deadly, slipped through the shallows. Claws churned the mud. A rush – and it was over.

Then the floodwaters came, laying down sheets of silt across the plain. Mud closed over bone. Time passed. And the Karoo fell quiet again.

Prof. Bruce Rubidge grew up on this farm. The Rubidge family has been farming at Wellwood since 1838, building one of the country’s oldest merino studs.

“I was one of those lucky okes who was born into palaeontology,” he smiles. “Fossils were always in my blood.”

The story began here on Wellwood long before he was born.

In April 1934 his grandfather, Sidney Rubidge, was at home on the farm when his 10-year-old daughter Peggy returned from boarding school in Graaff-Reinet with a question: “Daddy, what are fossils and where do you find them?” Sidney admitted he didn’t really know.

Bruce continues: “Grandpa said, ‘It’s something to do with bone embedded in rock. Let’s go for a picnic and see if we can find one.’” Out on a mudstone koppie Peggy noticed something unusual in the rock. “Grandpa started knocking away with a hammer and chisel and eventually a thing that looked like the skull of a horse started appearing.”

Unsure what he had uncovered, Sidney wrote to Dr Robert Broom at the Transvaal Museum. When the renowned palaeontologist rushed to the farm to examine the fossil, the scale of the discovery became clear.

“Broom told him it was 250 million years old. That blew my grandfather’s mind.”

The fossil turned out to be the complete skull of a gorgonopsian, a large, flesh-eating, mammal-like reptile that roamed the Karoo in the Permian period.

It lived long before the first dinosaurs appeared, at the time when Graaff-Reinet was at the centre of the vast supercontinent Pangaea. And, most significantly, it belonged to the therapsid family, which were distant ancestors of mammals.

Broom named the new species Dinogorgon rubidgei, honouring the man who had first chipped it from the rock.

Having a species named after him did not impress the farmer. What did impress him was its age.
“Broom asked him to present it to the Transvaal Museum, but Grandpa said, “No, if it’s been on this farm for over 200 million years, I’m sure it doesn’t want to leave now.”

The discovery marked the beginning of what would become the Rubidge Collection, one of the most significant fossil collections in the world. It would ignite a wave of scientific interest and help place South Africa at the forefront of Permian fossil research.

Encouraged by Broom, who had a keen interest in the origin of mammals, Sidney Rubidge began searching the surrounding Karoo for more fossils. What had started as curiosity turned into a serious pursuit.

Over the next decade he collected specimens from farms and koppies across a wide swathe of the central Karoo, often working with local fossil hunters who knew the landscape intimately. Among them was a Nieu-Bethesda road engineer, Croonie Kitching, and his son James, who later became one of the Karoo’s most accomplished palaeontologists.

“As my grandfather was a pioneer in the field of Karoo palaeontology, many of the fossils he was finding turned out to be new species,” Bruce says.

By the mid-20th century, the purpose-built glass cupboards on Wellwood held hundreds of fossils. Each one was meticulously recorded and labelled by Bruce’s parents, Richard and Pam Rubidge, and neatly laid out on red felt.

“I grew up on the farm with my grandfather’s fossils thinking that every family had a collection like ours,” Bruce chuckles.

As a little boy of three, he once picked up a piece of concrete and proudly cycled with it to his grandfather’s house, convinced he had discovered a fossil.

“Grandpa said, ‘That’s a very nice fossil, thank you,’” Bruce recalls. A few days later Sidney handed the ‘fossil’ back to him. He had quietly carved eyes, nostrils and teeth into the lump of concrete. That sparked Bruce’s curiosity, and two years later the five-year-old found his first real fossil on the farm: a gorgonopsian, just like his grandpa’s.

In time, that childhood fascination would lead Bruce into palaeontology. He spent three decades at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he headed the Evolutionary Studies Institute. He became a Distinguished Professor and an internationally recognised authority on the ancient animals preserved in the rocks of the Karoo Basin.

In 2020, Bruce and his wife Marina returned to Graaff-Reinet to realise a life-long dream: to bring the Rubidge fossils out of the cupboards on Wellwood and into a space where their story could be shared and interpreted.

Through generous sponsorship, a historic building was bought in the heart of Graaff-Reinet, renovated and custom-fitted to house the collection. Last year, after 91 years of curation by four successive generations of Rubidge farmers, the entire fossil collection was moved to town.

Today the collection forms the heart of Karoo Origins – The Fossil Centre, a dynamic space that is part museum and education centre and part research hub. Academically linked to Wits, the centre also serves as a field station for local and international palaeontologists working in the Karoo.
“I could have given the collection to a museum or a university,” Bruce says. “But there it would have been swallowed up by much larger collections. Here, people can experience the fossils where they were actually found and that has greater significance.”

The story begins the moment you walk through the door.

On a pedestal near the entrance is the skull that started it all: Sidney Rubidge’s gorgonopsian, the fossil Peggy spotted on a picnic in 1934. Around it the story unfolds in fragments. There are photographs of Wellwood, copies of Sidney’s letters, and correspondence from the great palaeontologist Robert Broom, whose excitement about the discovery placed the Karoo on the scientific map.

From the family story, the view expands.

Glass cases line the walls, each carefully lit, as if in a portrait gallery. Inside them are rows of therapsid skulls, more than 850 in total – the strange faces of animals that once dominated the Karoo.

Seen together, evolution unfolds. Some skulls are heavy and reptilian; others show the subtle progression in bone, teeth and jaw that would eventually lead toward mammals.

Among them are 107 holotypes, the original fossils used by scientists to define new species.

“Museums usually lock holotypes away,” Bruce says. “But I wanted people to see the whole Rubidge collection, to understand just how many animals once lived here.

“In the rocks of the Karoo there are 247 different species of animals,” he explains. “My grandfather was responsible for finding 107 of these.”

Around the corner, the skulls are brought vividly back to life.

A six-minute looping animation settles on a Permian waterhole. Life-sized therapsids, anatomically exact, enter, hesitate, drink. A gorgonopsian moves into view, its scale precise, its movements convincing. Visitors watch in silence as the animals come and go.
In the next room, the world begins to unravel.

A section titled ‘The Great Dying’ traces the greatest mass extinction in the history of the earth, 252 million years ago. Massive volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia drove greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Temperatures rose, oceans warmed and ecosystems collapsed. The catastrophe wiped out 90% of species. A small lineage of therapsids survived and would eventually give rise to mammals.

“The Karoo fossils show how life changed before and after this event,” says Bruce. “Lootsberg Pass, just north of Graaff-Reinet, preserves one of the most complete records in the world of this extinction. Scientists from all over the world come here to study it. We’re still learning more about the extinction and the characteristics of those that survived.”

The exhibition then turns to the present. Modern humans appear as a late arrival in the sequence of life. The focus shifts to the consequences of our actions – a new wave of extinction, now unfolding across the planet and driven by human activity.

“What happened at the end of the Permian was driven by massive environmental change,” Bruce says. “The difference now is that there are no volcanic eruptions. It is us. We are changing the system.”

The story told here is not only about fossils. It is about our place in the long history of life on earth.
Outside, the Karoo lies quiet. Beneath the surface, the record continues to be laid down, slowly, over time. V

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Tussen die bome in die tuin van die Hoër Meisieskool Bloemhof op Stellenbosch, net mooi daar waar almal elke dag verbystap, staan ’n beeld van ’n jong meisie, haar arms spontaan na bo gestrek, haar oë toe, asof sy in ’n oomblik van dankbaarheid en vreugde vasgevang is.

Op die klipvoetstuk van die beeld is in handskrif die woord “Dankbaarheidsvreugde” aangebring.

Die verhaal van die beeld gaan terug na ’n Ouma-en-Oupa-Lentetee in 2024 by Bloemhof. Die verhaal van die skepper van die beeld, Pierre Volschenk, gaan nóg verder terug, reeds amper ’n volle eeu.

Op die dag van die Lentetee neem Pierre sy kleindogter Linki-Mari Volschenk, vanjaar ’n matrikulant, aan die hand. Kom, wys my jou skool. Hy verwonder hom aan Bloemhof se versameling kunswerke in die skool se gange, die voorportaal en personeelkamer. Hy raak aan die gesels met die leerkragte en iemand skraap genoeg moed bymekaar om te vra: “Sien oom Pierre nog kans vir ’n beeld, ’n beeld vir Bloemhof se 150ste bestaansjaar?”

Sonder om te huiwer en met emosie in sy stem sê hy, ja, dit sal vir hom ’n voorreg wees.

En op 17 Oktober 2025, op die 2025-matrieks se uitstapdag, is die Bloemhofferbeeld onthul.

Daarby bly dit nie. Pierre skenk ook ’n olieverfskildery wat hy gemaak het van sy vriendin Maggie Laubser tussen sonneblomme uit sy persoonlike versameling aan Bloemhof.

INSIG

Bo teen die hange van die Hottentots-Hollandberge in Gordonsbaai, in die drieverdiepinghuis wat hy self gebou het, gesels ek met Pierre. Met die skilderagtige Valsbaai aan ons voete, vertel hy my van die mense wat sy lewensfilosofie help vorm het.

Ek kan net stil sit en luister na hierdie energieke 99-jarige kunstenaar. Sy woorde en stories het trefkrag en sy argief is vol.

Sy humorsin borrel kort-kort uit. Hy lag as hy terugdink aan baie staaltjies uit sy kleurryke lewe. Dit is asof sy diep insig in die kunsbeginsels deel is van sy daaglikse lewe waarin kosmaak en die versorging van sy ranktamaties en vrugtebome vir hom net so belangrik is soos die skep van kunswerke.

Een van die insigte wat by hom bly vassteek, is die woorde van ’n ander groot kunstenaar, Jean Welz. In 1970 skilder Pierre ’n portret van Jean toe dié met hierdie wyse woorde vorendag kom: “Jy sien nie wat jy sien nie, jy sien wat jy weet. Hoe meer jy weet, hoe meer sien jy.”

Luister jy na Pierre, besef jy hy sien en weet met wysheid en kennis en dat hy dit op sy hele lewe toepas.

Tydens sy sorgelose kinderjare op Leliedal, later Olyfberg, naby Houtbosdorp, nou deel van die ZZ2-boerdery in Limpopo, het Pierre reeds sy gawe vir skeppende werk ontdek. Hy het gekyk hoe die grootmense kleipotte en die kinders kleiosse maak en mettertyd al die kleigate op die plaas leer ken. Modellering van osse is steeds een van sy geliefde temas.

So ook buffels. Daarvan getuig die lewensgroot buffel op Lourensford wat hy onlangs vir Christo Wiese gemaak het.

Pierre se liefde vir die natuur kom ook uit sy kindertyd. Toe hy ná sy plaasskooldae aan die Laerskool Paardedrift vir sy hoërskooljare Polokwane (Pietersburg) toe moes gaan, was skoene dra die ergste straf, maar hy het hom ten volle uitgeleef en aan alles deelgeneem: Voortrekkers, volkspele, die debatsvereniging (waarvan hy voorsitter was), asook atletiek, rugby, tennis, en skyfskiet.

In 1944 studeer hy met ’n lening aan die Normaalkollege in Pretoria en verwerf ’n Onderwysdiploma, gevolg deur ’n BA-graad aan die Universiteit van Pretoria.

Jare van heeltydse en daarna deeltydse studie volg. Hy gee klas in kuns aan hoërskole en kolleges en vorder tot senior kunsinspekteur in die Departement van Kleurlingonderwys. Tydens hierdie vrugbare jare ontdek hy Conrad Theys en help hom groei tot een van ons land se voorste kunstenaars.

Pierre ontwikkel tot ’n veelsydige kunstenaar en opvoeder. In 1972 word hy die eerste Suid-Afrikaner wat ’n doktorsgraad (DPhil) in beeldende kunste aan die Universiteit van Pretoria verwerf met die proefskrif “Kleur as skilderkunstige element in die werk van Gregoire Boonzaier”. Tussen 1974 en 1986 is hy professor en hoof van die Departement Beeldende Kunste aan die Universiteit van Durban-Westville.

Ná sy aftrede in 1986 verhuis hy en sy vrou, Marie, Gordonsbaai toe, waar die 60-jarige Pierre self hul huis bou – ’n pragtige woning, met ’n eie ateljee en genoeg ruimte vir tweelingdogters Marlene en René, laatlam Pierre, hul sewe kleinkinders, en nege agterkleinkinders.

’N KLEIN BEGIN

Pierre se kunsloopbaan het klein begin. In sy jonger dae verkoop hy tydens vakansies by Tshipise sy waterverfwerke van Bosveldtonele met kremetartbome – “effens in die styl van Pierneef” – vir ’n appel en ’n ei. Die eerste werk wat hy van die hand sit, besorg hom ’n volle vyf pond.

Hy raak mettertyd veral bekend vir sy portretstudies, landskap- en straattonele, en Bosveldtemas. Sy liefde vir kleiwerk (en dus beeldhouwerk) kom uit sy kinderjare se speel op die plaas.

Dit is veral Pierre se beeldhouwerk – dink aan die een van Dok Craven – wat hom ná aan die harte van Stellenbossers gebring het. In 1995 is sy bronsbeeld van die legendariese dr. Danie Craven, met sy hond, Bliksem, by Coetzenburg onthul. In ’n Kwela-onderhoud het hy met ’n ondeunde glimlag vertel hoe ’n hond wat saam met sy eienaar by die beeld verbygestap het, gaan vassteek en vir Bliksem geblaf het. Tóé, sê hy, het hy besef hy’t selfs Bliksem se emosie vasgevang.

In ’n 2010-onderhoud met Johan van Wyk, groet die 84-jarige Pierre met dié woorde: “Tyd raak min en daar wag nog baie wat gedoen moet word …” Hy doen daardie woorde gestand en onder die beelde wat hy sedertdien geskep het, is ’n lewensgroot buffel vir die Lynnwood Bridge-kompleks in Pretoria, gemaak toe hy reeds 89 jaar oud was.

Die lys van bekendes van wie hy borsbeelde gemaak het, het bly aangroei en in 2012 voeg hy Chris Barnard (skrywer) en Chris Barnard (hartchirurg) se beelde by dié van ander bekendes soos Anna Neethling-Pohl, Anna M Louw, en Uys Krige.

Op 1 Mei 2026 vier hy sy 100ste verjaardag, en kan hy bevestig hy bly steeds getrou aan sy leuse: “Omskep tyd in waarde”.

Hier, in sy tuisateljee (dis 37 trappe op en af), skilder en doen hy beeldhou-, hout- en metaalwerk. Dis nie al nie.

Op die yslike 4 000m2-erf met sy waterstrome en ’n verskeidenheid plante, diere en voëls haal hy bykans 80kg heuning per jaar uit sy byekorwe. Sy Hobie Cat staan gereed, en kreeftrek doen hy saam met sy seun en vriende. Hy leef voluit en met oorgawe, elke dag.

Soos die onderskrif by die Bloemhofferbeeld lui, getuig sy hele lewe van vreugde en van dankbaarheid. Hy sluit ons gesprek só af: “Ek wil die Here prys solank ek lewe, ek wil psalmsing tot eer van my God solank ek nog daar is.”

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Former Blitzboks and current Stormers rugby player Seabelo Senatla launched his wine brand, Glory Wines, as a tangible memoir of his Sevens Rugby career. Drawing inspiration from his favourite Bible verse – “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” – the brand embodies Seabelo’s celebration of life and achievement beyond the rugby field.

“When I was entering the second phase of my career, I wanted to tip my hat to the run I had with Sevens Rugby,” says Seabelo. “It was accomplished and deserving of a memoir. I wanted something tangible that people could either enjoy by themselves or with others, a celebratory symbol. Wine was the perfect agent.”

While not a winemaker, Seabelo is involved in the entire winemaking process with the cellar team, from harvest to bottling. Here, he does the opposite of what he does on the field: he steps back and embraces the wine’s own pace.

“Every piece of the puzzle matters and forms part of the story when the finished product is presented. We work with a certain approach, but wine also likes to do its own thing,” says Seabelo. “I guess one of the applications that translates from the rugby field to the winery is not imposing myself, but letting things happen naturally.”

With Sevens Rugby at the heart of his story, Seabelo created a seven-cultivar blend, with each component reflecting a chapter of his Blitzboks career.

The 2016 vintage marks the year he was named World Sevens Player of the Year. With this blend, Seabelo aims to tell a story of overcoming and becoming, while celebrating both.

“We all have relatable stories of triumph, some smaller, others substantial. The magnitude doesn’t matter. The aim is for the wine to act as a ‘reflector’, to have people reflect on the struggles they’ve overcome. It’s an ode, a celebration.”

While some might refer to it as a balancing act, Seabelo doesn’t perceive Glory Wines as a departure from his sporting career, but rather a continuation of it. For him, the interchangeability between the two is demanding, but deeply rewarding.

“I’m a complex person with different sides to me. Rugby targets one part of me, while the other venture targets another,” says Seabelo. “There are parts that cross-pollinate, but mostly it feels like I rest the one while I’m busy with the other. This keeps me fresh. Truly speaking, there is no balance. I’m just gunning at both with everything I have, which is my only setting.”

Looking ahead, both culturally and personally, Seabelo hopes Glory Wines will help break old barriers and create new connections.

“I’d love Glory Wines to break the psychological barrier that wine is only for the elite – it’s for all of us,” says Seabelo. “More than that, I want it to make people slow down and celebrate themselves.”

Once the curtain closes on his rugby career, Glory Wines will provide Seabelo with a seamless transition into a new industry. “It was certainly the start of me carving another path for myself,” he says.

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Masch is a Stellenbosch-based fashion and leather atelier known for its quality leather bags, clothing and accessories that are designed to be timeless and versatile. While its beautiful Church Street storefront is now a local landmark, Masch’s first creations were sold from a simple dorm-room desk.

“My desk was always doubling as either a study space or a workbench for my craft projects,” says Madri Scherman, founder of Masch. “My uncle helped me source some leather and I made myself a clutch. I enjoyed the project so much that, with the leftover leather, I made a few more clutches in different shapes and sizes.”

At this stage, Madri saw crafting as nothing more than a hobby. While she was creating purely out of passion and curiosity, her enthusiasm resonated with people and ultimately set Masch’s journey in motion.

“My early supporters in Irene and around Stellenbosch were absolutely the reason I dared to dream bigger. It shifted my mindset from ‘this is just a little hobby’ to ‘maybe this could be something more’.”

Encouraged by her close-knit community, Madri soon moved beyond clutches and bow ties to the dresses and clothing she had once made just for herself. From the beginning, local enthusiasm steered the brand’s direction, with personal connections and trust becoming the building blocks for Masch. The result is a deeply personal brand where quality outweighs quantity.

“As a maker, I’m in this because I genuinely love the craft and I want every single piece that leaves our studio to feel special,” says Madri. “From the beginning, I’ve kept my runs limited. It allows us to pour our attention into each design and ensure it’s the absolute best it can be.”

While this approach has meant slower growth for Masch, Madri isn’t concerned – it’s all part of the brand’s bigger picture.

“I’m not interested in mass-producing a million bags or garments; I’m interested in making great items that people treasure. In practical terms, it also means less waste and a more sustainable way of doing business, which matters to me.”

Focusing on clean lines, functional shapes and high-quality materials, Madri’s design philosophy is aimed at creating pieces that outlast trends. Whether experimenting with a new leather texture or introducing a fresh colour palette inspired by her travels, Madri succeeds in keeping Masch’s designs classic and timeless without them becoming dated.

“I hope you can recognise a Masch piece by its balance of simplicity and subtle, distinctive details. Within this framework, I definitely allow my collections to evolve,” says Madri. “It’s a constant balancing act between consistency and creativity. We stay true to our roots so that any piece from any year still feels unmistakably Masch, but we also keep pushing forward so there’s always a next chapter to the story.”

Looking ahead, Madri hopes that Masch designs continue to be meaningful companions throughout the different seasons of people’s lives – whether it’s a leather clutch purchased as a student and still carried to work years later or a piece that becomes a family heirloom.

“As Masch continues to grow, I’ll keep designing with versatility and longevity in mind. I hope my pieces continue to offer people confidence and a sense of authenticity, no matter where they are in life. When you carry or wear something from Masch, I want you to feel that it’s your trusted piece, something that reflects your style and carries a bit of your story,” says Madri.

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Anton Louw and Nico Hendriksz are the designers behind Kino, an award-winning Cape Town furniture studio known for minimalist, solid wood pieces crafted with precision and care.

School friends and alumni of Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch, the pair went on to study industrial design before turning their shared passion for craftsmanship into a studio that celebrates refined form, natural materials and thoughtful detail.

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Meegan Mitchell is a photographer whose work explores the expressive potential of both digital and analogue imagery.

Inspired by everyday life and people, she instinctively observes and composes moments long before pressing the shutter. For Meegan, photography has become a constant way of seeing.

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Cape Town-based photographer Daniel Naudé is known for his quietly powerful images that explore moments of stillness between humans and animals. His work captures a shared sense of presence and intimate, timeless encounters that blur the line between the specific and the universal.

A Stellenbosch University graduate, Daniel has exhibited internationally and his work has featured in major public and private collections, including the J Paul Getty Museum.

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^{Reptiles have been Emile Rossouw’s passion since his childhood in Die Boord. Today, when he’s not out on a call, you’ll find him at home in Stellenbosch with his family and pet snakes like Fanie, the Gaboon viper.}

For most of us, it is our worst nightmare come true. A yellow- black tail disappearing into the wood pile beneath the braai. A fat puff adder curled up beneath the dog’s basket. A commotion in the trees that turns out to be a boomslang on the hunt. But for snake catcher Emile Rossouw, it’s all in a day’s work.

In the height of summer, Emile whose real day job is in property, is always ready to take a frantic call. On the end of the line? Someone in Stellenbosch with a venomous snake in their home.

In the past year, Emile (@stellenbosch_snake_removals) has blown up on social media, his almost 32 000 Instagram followers enthralled by his snake captures in and around Stellenbosch.

Growing up in Die Boord where their family home backed onto an open field, he and his brother would spend days catching snakes. When he turned 12, his parents finally allowed him to buy his own pet snake. “From then on, it was over,” he says and laughingly points at the pet snakes he keeps in his home in De Zalze. “I love animals in general, but I’ve always been fascinated by snakes and creepy crawlies!” Learning about snakes from local experts and volunteering at Animal Zone in Klapmuts taught Emile all he needed to know about handling reptiles. At one stage he kept more than 40 highly venomous snakes – and a hefty monitor lizard – in his bedroom at home.

Word soon got out and, at the age of 15, he became the person to call if you had a snake on the property and wanted it gone. Today, as Stellenbosch expands and development encroaches into the natural areas around town, he is as busy as ever. In the height of snake season – the hot summer months from October to March – Emile’s phone can ring up to six times a day from locals needing help.

“WITHIN THE FIRST FEW SECONDS, I HAVE A VERY GOOD IDEA OF HOW A SNAKE IS GOING TO BEHAVE. BUT IF I DON’T GET IT RIGHT, I NEED TO KNOW HOW TO REACT.”

Watch a few of his videos and you’ll soon wonder why he’s not wearing any protective equipment. He can be seen climbing trees and crawling into cupboards wearing just a T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops. And carrying a snake hook.

“It’s easy for people to say I’m being reckless, but that’s because they don’t understand snake behaviour,” says Emile. “It’s a little like Newton’s law of action and reaction. If I move aggressively, the snake is going to come back aggressively and try and bite me. It takes time to learn behaviour, but what’s most important is that if I am calm and move slowly, the snake will be calm. The only exception is a boomslang. Then you need to move quickly; otherwise they will disappear into the trees and you never catch them.”

He is quick to admit that snakes can be unpredictable and, while it’s easy to generalise about snake behaviour, he always focuses on the exception to the rule. “Within the first few seconds, I have a very good idea of how a snake is going to behave. But if I don’t get it right, I need to know how to react. And that’s not something you can learn in a course. It’s all about years of experience. Every time I catch a snake, it’s a different scenario.”

Remarkably, Emile has been bitten by a venomous snake only once: a Cape cobra captured outside the tasting room of a Stellenbosch wine farm. Although he spent a day in intensive care as a precaution, it was a ‘dry’ bite – no venom was injected – and he was home the next day.

That bite was a rare misstep in an otherwise simple retrieval. Others haven’t been so easy.

Emile was recently called out to deal with a Cape cobra under a house on stilts. The snake was hiding in the narrow gap where the house met the hillside. “I had to crawl in with my headlamp,” he recalls. “As I approached, the cobra was hooding and struck at me a few times. But as soon as it turned, I pulled it with the hook and grabbed its tail. But then I had to crawl back out of this narrow space, dragging a huge cobra behind me! And it was one of the biggest cobras I’d ever caught!”

Having caught a snake, Emile returns it to a wilderness area as close as possible to the point of capture, while minimising the likelihood of the snake returning to a built-up area. He is certified by CapeNature, Stellenbosch Municipality and the University of Stellenbosch to capture and release snakes in and around town.

If the snake is injured, he’ll work with local vets and return the snake to full health before releasing it.

Although Emile does not charge for capturing snakes, he usually requests a nominal call-out fee of R500 to cover the transport costs of capture and release.

Remarkably, many Stellenbosch residents refuse to pay and would rather kill or capture the snake themselves, risking being bitten in the process.

“It’s frustrating because I definitely don’t make money from capturing snakes,” says Emile. “It’s actually costing me money to drive out and capture the snake, then drive home, then go out again to release the snake.” For residents without the means to contribute, he gladly removes the snakes for free to ensure they are unharmed.

“Some housing estates will cover the cost for me to come and remove the snake, which is fantastic, but I’d really like to see this included as a municipal service,” he says. “Not only do snakes keep rat and mouse populations in check, but they are also food for a lot of other animals, such as mongooses and owls. They are so important for our environment.” 

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