Just what they're getting up to in Hogsback

Starways pot­tery and the Rose theatre — You don't expect to find a theatre in Hogsback. Not only is it a theatre, albeit a little one, but it's open air, in the middle of a glade of pine trees, and named after the Elizabethan theatre of the same name. The Rose was London's most his­toric theatre, built in 1587 by Philip Henslowe on Bankside in Southwark and home to many of Shakespeare's productions.

The Rose at Starways is sim­il­arly built mainly of tim­ber, with earth for the walls and, although I would ima­gine this ver­sion is a lot smal­ler, it is anchored securely by two pine trees con­veni­ently set on either side of the theatre's entrance. It's all really rather quaint. There is light­ing, a sound sys­tem and a series of tables and chairs hewn from logs of wood ...

It's rather like step­ping back in time when one arrives at Starways. In the lower por­tion of the prop­erty, in the midst of a pine wood, there rest two eco friendly build­ings made from earth and tim­ber, one of which is pot­ter Anton van der Merwe's Forest Gallery (he is an accom­plished painter in water­col­our and oil apart from being a mas­ter pot­ter), also known as the Gate Cottage Gallery, and the other is the Rose Theatre.

The theatre intrigues us. First of all there is already a group of people hap­pily enscon­sed within its walls, who turn out to be rel­at­ives of Andre van der Merwe, who look as if they could eas­ily have fallen through time to grace a tav­ern of sim­ilar ilk. They play cards and chat, and, whilst pay­ing us little atten­tion, hap­pily point in the gen­eral dir­ec­tion of the hill to another large build­ing as the one we should visit. We don't learn much about the theatre from them but we're happy to fol­low instruction.

We trudge up the hill to its sum­mit where there sits a won­der­ful out­door pot­tery stu­dio, hewn from tim­ber, earth, tex­tured rock walls and recycled doors — a beau­ti­ful stained glass pair of which crown the entrance closest to the hill. The ram­shackle stu­dio is filled with wood-fired pot­tery, where the artist exhib­its, and also pro­duces to ship over­seas. Andre shuffles through in a quietly unas­sum­ing way, smiles hello, and has little more to say, until we engage him in con­ver­sa­tion about his kiln.

Fuel burn­ing kilns are appar­ently some­thing of a sci­ence. They're more rarely used than elec­tric or gas fired kilns and it's a far more dif­fi­cult tech­nique. Wood fir­ing and the pro­cess of reduc­tion fired ceramic art are the realm of alchem­ists and Andre expounds about how the tem­per­at­ur­ees of this kiln are so hot that they're sim­ilar to those in which the earth was first formed. He con­tin­ues to talk about the local potter's clay, which he gets nearby, and cop­per oxide and how it trans­mutes and nor­mally turns from green to blood red, whilst iron oxide pro­duces rus­set reds.

He is in love with his art, and whilst I under­stand little of it, his love for his work is infec­tious. His emphasis is on pro­du­cing works of art that have a use­ful func­tion, and on a table infront of us I can see large water cool­ers or stor­age con­tain­ers on which he has already begun work. Storage in stone­ware allows bever­age and food to stay fresher longer.

Anton has lived in these Hogsback woods since 1992. He came to his art largely by a pro­cess of self instruc­tion, one he claims allows him greater pos­sib­il­ity of doing ori­ginal and more rel­ev­ant works. He appren­ticed him­self whilst younger to a group of pot­ters that included Bruce Walford, Steve Shapiro, Barbara Robinson, Paul Pepworth and Craig Leslie. He then opened a teach­ing prac­tice in Cape Town before mov­ing to Hogsback.

It's when his daugh­ter wanders down into the stu­dio, en route to the Rose, that I learn more about the com­ings and goings at Starways. Vale is young, petite and vibrant. You wouldn't think that she held an MA in visual art or that she had a cer­ti­fic­ate in per­sonal and busi­ness coach­ing. She's joined her father and step­mother in Hogsback to work in the open air pot­tery studio.

From here I learn that Gwyneth, Anton's wife, is respons­ible for the per­form­ing arts pro­duc­tions in the Rose. She's an opera singer by trade and has formed a local opera com­pany that draws its mem­bers from the two local uni­ver­sity music depart­ments at which she lec­tures – Fort Hare University in Alice, and Rhodes University in Grahamstown. She's also a qual­i­fied Alexander Technique teacher, which she com­bines with her teach­ing method to provide even young sing­ers with tension-free sound. In her spare moments she makes piz­zas in a wood oven in the theatre, and jew­ellery. A pretty neck­lace which hangs on the wall in the stu­dio has already caught my eye.

As we wander down the hill again to The Rose theatre with Vale to listen to a CD of her brother's music on sale here, I learn that there is to be a gath­er­ing that even­ing, a staged 'sit in' to demon­strate sup­port of the cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copenhagen, which has only just got under­way. There is an avid 'greenie' group in Hogsback who are very aware of the injustices being done to the environment.

I later learn too that there is a very close rela­tion­ship between Starways and Mafika pot­tery, just a couple of kilo­metres down the road. When in the pro­cess of buy­ing the prop­erty for Starways, Anton ascer­tained that Enoch Mafika's father is bur­ied on the site. Anton prom­ised that whilst Starways was under his care, any­one could visit the grave and that Enoch could con­tinue to cut wattles grow­ing on the burial ground. The rela­tion­ship between the two fam­il­ies grew when Anton took first Willie and then Luyanda on as apprentices.

These two men helped to build Starways. At the same time, an arrange­ment was made that for every brick or stone laid at Starways there would be a sim­ilar struc­ture built at Mafika's home and fund­ing was awar­ded to the pro­ject from the National Department of Arts and Culture for the poverty alle­vi­ation project.

Yet again we dis­covered that in Hogsback, if you're pre­pared to dig a little deeper, so much more is on the go than what appears on the surface.

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