For over fifty years, Ed Pascoe has been taking collectors to the source. It started in England, walking through the workshops of Royal Doulton, watching artisans shape porcelain by hand. Then the journey moved to Africa, where it has remained. And everything changed.
This year, we returned once again to the rural communities of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, to visit the studios where the pieces in our gallery begin their lives. Not as tourists. Not as buyers. As guests.
The Studios
We visited the studios of Love Art, Wiseman, and Senzo Duma Ceramics. Each one a world of its own. In one room, a sculptor shapes a rhinoceros from raw clay while sketches of the finished piece hang on the wall behind him. In another, a painter leans close to a pangolin sculpture, applying color with a brush so fine it holds only a single drop of pigment at a time.
This is where every piece at Pascoe Gallery begins. Not in a factory. Not on a production line. In a room full of light, with green hills outside the window, made by someone whose hands know the clay the way a musician knows an instrument.
The Lunch
After the studio visits, the community hosted a lunch under a white tent on the hillside. Tables set with white cloths. Platters of home-cooked food. The green valleys of KwaZulu-Natal stretching out in every direction.
Then the speeches began. Wiseman opened with a prayer. Jabu spoke about what fair wages had meant for her family. Ed stood and spoke to the entire gathering about what it means to build something together across two continents, across cultures, across generations. The room went quiet when he spoke about family.
The Dance
After lunch, the celebration moved outdoors. Women in traditional Zulu dress began to dance on the grass, with the green hills rising behind them and the afternoon sun casting long shadows. There was singing. There was laughter. There was a feeling that something real had been shared between people who live very different lives but are connected by the work of their hands.
Beyond the Art
What sets these trips apart from anything else available to collectors is what happens outside the studio. A bakery now stands in the community, built with revenue from ceramic sales. Susie, one of the collectors who joined us, was so moved by what she saw that she invested $10,000 of her own money to help a local woman open a beauty shop. It opens next month.
Her travel agent, who books her five-star safaris across the continent, told us no luxury agency in Johannesburg offers anything close to this. You can book a private lodge, a guided game drive, a vineyard tour. You cannot book a seat at a table in rural KwaZulu-Natal, sharing lunch with the artists whose work sits on your mantelpiece, watching them shape the next piece, hearing the stories behind it. That experience exists on no itinerary. It exists here.
Susie described it as the best trip of her life. We think you would feel the same.
Stay tuned. The pieces from this trip are arriving soon.