Assembly of art treasure a family affair
THE Jumunas are not your typical art collectors. Savy Jumuna, who started collecting Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft Centre pieces in the 1970s, is a Women’s Institute stalwart and makes an excellent apricot jam. Her husband, Shan, is a businessman with a sugar cane farm in Tongaat, north of Durban, in KwaZulu-Natal.
Savy first became aware of the work of the Rorke’s Drift centre through a family friend, Don Joseph, who was an art teacher in Chatsworth. In the early 1970s, Joseph set up exhibitions of the art in unlikely venues.
With African art barely recognised as such, exhibitions took place in foreign embassies, the YMCA and “little halls here and there”. Much of the work was bought by foreigners and taken overseas, but Savy had begun her own collection.
“I just liked the prints,” she said. “There were pictures of hunting and Bible pictures. I could see what the people were feeling, how they lived and what they thought. It was a pity — you had a talent but you couldn’t show it. I knew that one day it would be
There is something leading us to these pieces
important to the younger generation to know about life in those days.”
Collecting the works of the Rorke’s Drift artists has spanned 50 years and two generations of Jumunas. It is almost a calling — the rescuing of pieces from farflung places and bringing them home.
Shan recently returned from Germany, where he found two pieces. “Wherever we are, we buy whatever we come across,” said daughter Ishana, an avid art collector. “There is something leading us to these pieces. A hundred people might be looking for the same thing, and without searching it comes to us.”
They have no particular favourites. Rather, they are fascinated by each print as it joins the collection. “Sometimes you will see that they struggled to find decent paper — some of the prints are on cardboard,” said Ishana. “We didn’t know how to store or restore the prints. We didn’t use special packaging. That they have lasted this well is amazing.”
Craig Mark, managing director of Kizo Art Consultants, is behind the nationwide tour of the collection. About seven years ago, Savy visited the Kizo Art Gallery (which has since closed) and asked Mark to look at their collection. Savy returned the next day with a modest portfolio. “It was packed with unframed prints,” said Mark. “I was shocked. Among the portfolio were special pieces that collectors have been searching for, and there they were in the Jumunas’ folder. I knew we had come across a real treasure.”
For the family, this has never been about financial gain. They have no intention of selling the pieces. “This is my parents’ legacy,” said Ishana. “No matter where their children or grandchildren are in the world, this is something to be proud of, something that makes us South African and that gives us everlasting roots in this country.”