History lesson – Sevilla Rock
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard from a few people who’ve spotted a textile design that’s near-identical to my Herds design in concept, layout and colourway. I’ve been in touch with the designer – also South African – who refuses to acknowledge the uncanny similarity in concept, layout and choice of colour, and claims utter originality, so I’m leaving it at that.
This post is not to fling accusations about, nor will I name names, because bleating is just not my style (not in public, anyway!), but I would like to tell you the story of how my Herds design came about.
About 10 years ago, I worked on a series of reading books, co-writing and illustrating them with Maggie Slingsby and Barbara Coombe in an intense and timeconsuming development process that saw us going away for long weekends together. Maggie’s husband Pete Slingsby is most famous for his maps of the Drakensberg and the Table Mountain range (and others), but he is also a respected amateur rock art expert. Our writing team would drive up to Travellers Rest in the Cedarberg, where we’d punctuate our long writing sessions with walks along the Sevilla Rock Art Trail, guided by Pete, who opened my eyes to the astonishing beauty and delicacy of the generations-old rock art heritage in South Africa.
I was just starting to get interested in screenprinting fabric at the time, and was trying to learn how to create a textile design. Pete very kindly lent me the flat-colour jpgs that he had made of the cave paintings, which I turned into vectors and used the motifs to make my first ever patterns.
I made up screens and printed a couple of one-off bags and pillows that I gave to friends and sold in my Etsy shop…
… and then I started producing the designs as a collection of screenprinted tea towels, then as upholstery fabrics too. I called the collection Sevilla Rock.
Colts and Colt Circles (now discontinued) both use a motif that Pete says may be a depiction of a young zebra foal, stumbling to its feet for the first time.
I got Pete to name all the designs, and also covered one of his lounge chairs in his choice of print, as a thank you for allowing me to use his records. He named this print Mongoose, which I am not sure was perfectly accurate, but heck, these drawings are thousands of years old! Who knows the real answers?
Duikers (above) and Herds (below) are the only two prints from the Sevilla Rock collection still in production. They started out as cushions and tea towels, but these days, we only have them as running metres, not as tea towels.
Sevilla Rock got me selected as an Emerging Creative with Design Indaba (in 2011?), and these designs were reproduced on flags that were flying all over the city in the weeks leading up to Design Indaba. I cannot find a picture of it, but that was quite a thrill. I also used the Colts in a fun collaboration with Satsuma Press and Pigeon Toe Ceramics in 2011 that we called Cloth Paper Clay, and exhibited at West Elm in Portland, Oregan. Read more about that here.
So there it is! The history of Sevilla Rock is lengthier and more rich than I’d even remembered before I’d started telling this story.
I love it that I started writing this blog post to try to put a lid on my frustration with recent events, but I’ve ended up with the realisation that the story, relationships and connections that these designs contain are SO rich and SO important to my sense of who I am, and that’s the true value of an original design! No copycat version is every going to share that part.
Marietjie
Wonderful Heather! Thanks so much for sharing this amazing collaboration. I enjoyed reading about how it all began and I would love to hear more stories about your process for other designs. I find it really interesting and inspiring.
skinnylaminx
Great idea! I’ll get onto some more historical posts 🙂
dojo
I do hope the copy cats learn a thing or two from this excellent article! Your creativity is obvious. They obviously lack it!
Peter and Maggie
Oh Heather, what times they were ….and how far you have travelled on your creative journey since then. We saw the aprons the bakers were wearing on the trailers of SABakeOff programmes and woooooondered…..hmmm? We still lounge in our ‘mongoose’ covered chair and dream dreams.
george
Art history in the making Lady, Art History in the making…
Wendy
Hi Heather!
Thank you so much for sharing the history of those special designs! If you’re anything like me, just the act of writing down your thoughts, inspirations, and sometimes frustrations, is therapeutic. It seems like this is the case, as you commented (in so many words) that you realized a copycat can’t possibly steal the feelings and inspirations that inspired those classic — so modern and sleek; yet ancient and historical – designs. Personally, I can’t get enough of your “herds” — I have tote bags, zip pouches, etc. – and I will accept no imitations! :0)
Shirley Lei
Still one of my favorite collections ever! Still have a desk chair covered in the mongoose and I still have one of the Satsuma Press cards with the colts. Beautiful highlight of the history that one piece of art or design can take us. And around the world no less! Take pride in that.