Southern Guild

Southern Guild was established in 2008 to provide a platform for collectible, limited-edition South African design, showcasing work by the most recognized names in the country and cultivating the careers of emerging contemporary designers. Southern Guild is also the organizer of GUILD, Africa’s only international design fair, that takes place in Cape Town in February each year.

South African design is artisanal, handmade and cerebral and its designers work in a very personal, exploratory way, with deep cultural relevance and little interest in passing trends. Southern Guild encourages collaboration and discourse, which aims to stimulate and provoke the local design industry and has become a benchmark for quality and originality. The gallery cohesively and comprehensively showcases the most important contemporary design from South Africa at the best fairs around the world.

For Design Miami/ Basel 2015, Southern Guild aims to convey the multi-faceted nature of South African design, which is layered with storytelling, political allusion, historical and cultural references and a drawing down into primal and earth-bound essence. These impulses are expressed through sculptural and graphic form that seems somehow familiar and yet strange.