TEDGlobal 2007
Marisa Fick-Jordan: The wonder of Zulu wire art
Filmed:
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In this short, image-packed talk, Marisa Fick-Jordan talks about how a village of traditional Zulu wire weavers built a worldwide market for their dazzling work.
Marisa Fick-Jordan - Craft artist, product designer
South African product designer Marisa Fick-Jordan works with Zulu wire artists to develop a sustainable, worldwide market for their bold and shimmering work. Full bio
South African product designer Marisa Fick-Jordan works with Zulu wire artists to develop a sustainable, worldwide market for their bold and shimmering work. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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The decorative use of wire in southern Africa
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dates back hundreds of years.
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But modernization actually brought communication
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and a whole new material, in the form of telephone wire.
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Rural to urban migration meant that newfound industrial materials
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started to replace hard-to-come-by natural grasses.
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So, here you can see the change
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from use -- starting to use contemporary materials.
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These pieces date back from the '40s to the late '50s.
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In the '90s, my interest and passion for transitional art forms
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led me to a new form,
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which came from a squatter camp outside Durban.
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And I got the opportunity to start working with this community
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at that point, and started developing, really,
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and mentoring them in terms of scale, in terms of the design.
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And the project soon grew from five to 50 weavers in about a year.
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Soon we had outgrown the scrap yards, what they could provide,
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so we coerced a wire manufacturer to help us,
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and not only to supply the materials on bobbins,
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but to produce to our color specifications.
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At the same time, I was thinking, well,
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there's lots of possibility here to produce contemporary products,
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away from the ethnic, a little bit more contemporary.
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So I developed a whole range around -- mass-produced range --
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that obviously fitted into a much higher-end decor market
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that could be exported and also service our local market.
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We started experimenting, as you can see, in terms of shapes,
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forms. The scale became very important,
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and it's become our pet project. It's successful,
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it's been running for 12 years. And we supply the Conran shops,
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and Donna Karan, and so it's kind of great.
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This is our group, our main group of weavers.
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They come on a weekly basis to Durban.
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They all have bank accounts.
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They've all moved back to the rural area where they came from.
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It's a weekly turnaround of production.
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This is the community that I originally showed you the slide of.
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And that's also modernized today,
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and it's supporting work for 300 weavers.
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And the rest says it all.
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Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Marisa Fick-Jordan - Craft artist, product designerSouth African product designer Marisa Fick-Jordan works with Zulu wire artists to develop a sustainable, worldwide market for their bold and shimmering work.
Why you should listen
Marisa Fick-Jordan is the co-author of Wired, the authoritative work on Zulu wire art. Using castoff telephone wire -- those plastic-coated copper strands you sometimes find outside switching boxes -- practitioners of this art create tightly woven pieces with bold patterning and fields of shimmering color.
Working with these talented African artists, Fick-Jordan has brought this art to the world, developing products and building a distribution network for a worldwide market. The end result: a traditional art form is preserved and developed -- and a village of weavers can earn a living through their art.
Marisa Fick-Jordan | Speaker | TED.com