FROM THE EDITOR

Editor-inChief Piet Smedy on honouring South Africa’s finest artisans

The robots are coming! it’s something straight out of an h. G. Wells novel and yet, as we attempt to situate ourselves within the fourth industrial revolution, it’s something very real (although perhaps not quite as dramatic as an invasion by tentacled Martian machines). the fact remains that, as artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality and the general internet of things continues to grow and evolve, the idea of the manmade, especially in the wabi-sabi sense of it, becomes all the more valuable – and important. it’s why this issue celebrates the uniquely human idea of craftsmanship.

Ask any of the artisans in this issue (and there are many) what craftsmanship means to them (and we did) and you’ll find no two answers are the same. there are common threads, sure – the honest expression of materiality, the commitment to a creative vision, a sense of personal narrative imbued within the work itself – but the fact remains that the craft of the maker remains unique to them, like a creative fingerprint left behind even after the process is long over. You can see it in the quietly meticulous joinery in the home of architect Jan-heyn Vorster of Malan-vorster, whose kitchen is this month’s cover star. it’s in the scarification of ceramicist Andile dyalvane’s large-scale works, in the muted tones of artist Adriana Jaros’s surrealist landscapes and in the elegantly philanthropic designs of architect francis Kéré.

to honour these craftspeople is to honour the very thing that makes us human: our tenacity, our ambition and our desire to find – and create – meaning in all we do. And that’s something no robot can take away.