Pitseng Arts & Crafts

Dr Matseke Drive commemorates a headmaster in Orlando West, the suburb much travelled by tourists from around South Africa and around the world. But for some reason this Dobsonville street doesn’t appear on most maps. If you do find your way there, on your way to Pitseng Arts and Crafts, you will drive past a school and then a row of new houses. After a while you will come to a nondescript precast cement wall on your left. On the right there is open veld.

NO-ONE FOR TENNIS

No sign alerts you to the fact that you have just arrived at Soweto’s only ceramic design company. Nor are there signs telling you that you are now at the Dobsonville Tennis Club. A small pedestrian gate is the only access. Derelict, with its weeds thrusting through the courts, the tennis club has never been properly utilised and its basic clubhouse never properly used. Now, thanks to the drive of one determined entrepreneur and artist, the Dobsonville Tennis Club is being put to a thoroughly practical use, even if it is a use quite unconnected with the game of lawn tennis.

Chris Lebese started Pitseng back in 2001 in downtown Johannesburg. Before that he had worked in the hotel industry but always knew that he wanted one day to start his own business. And he knew that it was going to be in the arts. Last year he brought the business to the township because he knew that that was where it belonged, and where it would have the space to grow.

Ask what Pitseng (the name means simply “pot”) does and Chris will tell you: “Basically, Pitseng produces vases.” He will then start talking animatedly about the business’s various “departments” – this in a business which employs just four people, all of them from the local community. At present Pitseng sells its products to just one shop, in Sandton’s Mandela Square. Their income comes from this single shop and the occasional commission.

NO TWO PRODUCTS THE SAME

Pitseng actually makes more than just vases. Chris’s creative mind is always developing new designs and product lines. These include candle holders, cups and salt and pepper sets. Working with white clay, he also makes the plaster of Paris moulds, but that is not to say that Pitseng is a production line stamping out hundreds of copies of the same design. On the contrary, Pitseng’s difference lies in the carving that goes into each product before it is fired. “What is unique about our business,” says Chris, “is that one product will never look like the other. You can see that the things we make are done with passion. It is something that has always been within me. Now the time has come to unleash it, and to let other people know what I can do.”

His dreams for the business include opening their own shop in one of Soweto’s new shopping malls, of exporting, maybe setting up another two ceramics factories in the township, employing at least 100 people.

HOW MAY WE HELP?

But Chris knows that Pitseng can’t get there on its own and that it needs as much help as it can get. He works closely with TEP, he says, particularly at exhibitions which are great catalysts for new business. “Since the beginning of this year, particularly, TEP have been visiting us, wanting to know how they can help. It’s great having people like this on your side. I have no doubt that they can help.

“Particularly, I’m hoping that they will help us put up billboards so that visitors can find their way to us. We have big plans for the tennis club. As long as we don’t put up permanent structures, the council is keen for us to develop this as an arts centre.

“I have this very soft spot for others. I don’t want to see people suffering. I want to help them put bread on the table. If I can grow this business I know we can put bread on a lot more tables. Our products are unique. Our business is also unique.”