Miracle Arts & Crafts

Petra Naruses is the creative mind behind a range of wired, beaded and recycled light-fittings, lampshades, mobiles and decorative craft for the home. Using recycled material such as beer-bottle tops, caps, wire, bicycle tyres, makalani shells and old zinc sheets, Petra creates a remarkable variety of popular lampshades and light-fittings. Combining rural Namibian colour palettes (earthy browns, rusty reds, sandy tans) with bright, shiny wire-mesh or dulled rusted wire, lends an almost otherworldly ‘look and feel’ to the mobiles and light-fittings. The handmade light-fittings in particular are versatile enough to stylishly compliment the interiors of both chic urban and elegant, rural farmsteads. The natural materials (acacia seeds, old zinc, pips, pods, and driftwood) combined in the making of the mobiles, a welcome addition to any home, betray an artistically-oriented patterned organisation.

For the past twenty years, the Omba Trust has worked closely with the Ju/Hoansi community in Namibia to foster a sustainable development model to integrate the rare skills of the Ju/Hoansi into the mainstream economy. The Ju/Hoansi is a San tribal community in rural Namibia, confined in large part to but a small section of their previous hunter-food-gathering landscape. With the guidance and support of Omba Arts Trust, community members fashion beautifully intricate jewellery from ostrich egg shells and create very rare pieces of art, often used as inspiration for a unique range of fabric prints also available from the Trust. In addition, Omba has for the longest time engaged skilled and talented basket weavers from various parts of Namibia to produce a range of decorative and highly sought-after baskets; a standard feature in most Namibian homes representing an abstraction of symbols relating to wealth and fertility, in particular.

In 2003, American citizen Valerie Garber started an NGO, Work of Our Hands, in Five Rand Kamp, an informal settlement of Okahandja, Namibia. It currently supports 13 formerly disadvantaged women with skills transfer and craft education. The women are taught the art of making jewellery using wire and beads; and also crocheting wire to make attractive, durable adornments for the wrist and the neckline, in colours and hues compatible with the most sophisticated of wardrobes. The ceramic beads used to make the jewellery, earrings in particular, are also handmade by the women of the project making every item a unique piece of art. Each handmade item of jewellery is accompanied by the name and a small photograph of its creator, adding dimension to the beautiful items. The income generated by sales of the jewellery benefits the disadvantaged women involved in the project, to purchase raw materials, pay rents and sales staff.

Sara Basson, from Leonardville, produces useful, decorative pieces which are a variety of bead-edged doilies, dolls, placemats and mobiles. Sara was taught by her mother, which served to guide her entire life and its course to date were shaped by her skills at crafting. After moving to Windhoek, she initially sold her handicraft on the streets of the city before applying successfully for a stall at the Namibia Craft Centre. The curios and crafts at her stall reflect Sara Basson’s distinctly rural Namibian aesthetics, almost untouched by her urban surroundings, an innate sense of proportion (small dolls) and an endearing quest for quality as shown by the pristine finishing on her handmade doilies and knitted items. Sara vows to continue producing handmade craft until the day she dies because she enjoys working with her hands. Each item at Saras Sara’n, the name of her stall, is handmade and entirely unique; the singular manifestation of one brave, rural Namibian woman’s inspiration.