RosemaryB Jewellery: The Umpumulelo Beaders Kwa Zulu Natal South Africa

During our recent visit to South Africa visiting many bead artists around the country and immersing ourselves in everything beady we came accross a group of women who work from a rural base in Kwa Zulu Natal at the site of the Mandela Capture site in the Kwa Zulu Natal Midlands.

The capture site features a small museum featuring the life of Nelson Mandela with its main feature being the unique Mandela steel structure designed by Marco Cianfanelli and erected to commemorate the 50 year anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s capture in 1962.

The 50 steel columns measuring 32 feet (6,5m) and 29 feet (9m) are each anchored to a concrete base. The shape and form of the sculpture is representative of the leaders 27 years behind bars and the image of Nelson Mandela only becomes visible from a certain angle.

The Umpumulelo Beaders

The beaders are a group of rural women using traditional beading techniques to create contemporary beaded artworks. They have developed an international reputation and have produced a number of major commissions all executed in hand sewn beadwork. The first of these was for the refurbished Durban Playhouse foyer in 2005. Completed in 10 weeks by nine artists each making a panel which, when collectively installed measured 30 square metres representing aspects of the arts and culture taking place in the playhouse. This was a triumphant example of creative collaboration synthesizing the skills of rural women in contemporary vision.

A second commission for the new Standard Bank Durban Headquarters building followed in 2006. Nguni cattle the symbol of wealth and the Royal herd of the King, and a rural Zulu village is the subject. The mottled patterning of the Nguni cattle herd rendered in glass beads, which themselves were traded for centuries as currency, is madew up of ten panels measuring eleven by three meters. This is juxtaposed by a second set of ten panels of equal size on the opposite wall of the foyer depicting a rural Zulu village collectively measuring 66 square metres.

Anglo Ashanti commissioned a work measuring 32 square metres depicting the Witwatersrand Basin geological structure and a second work that rises four floors in the foyer of the Turbine Square Building depicts a cross section of one of Anglogold Ashanti’s mines and is inspired by the geological strata.

The African National Congress commissioned a series of works for Albert Luthuli House in Johannesburg. These works inspired by the elements of the spear shield and wheel making up the ANC logo and flag are superimposed over words taken from the freedom charter.Many other works have been commissioned over the last several years the most noted of which consist of sets of artworks of Nelson Mandela spanning his life from the earliest known images of him as a student through subsequent decades to him as the elder statesman and world icon. The Umpumulelo Beaders now have their works on display in many important buildings in South Africa including the Apartheid Museum and as far afield as Malmo Museum in Sweden.