A master of hand-thrown ceramics, Chuma Maweni’s distinctive approach combines contemporary hand-coiled shapes marked with precisely patterned incisions. From his studio in Woodstock, Cape Town, he makes exquisitely crafted ceramic vessels and furniture, the latter finding their largest form to date in his sought-after Imbizo series of tables, side-tables and stools.

Chuma was born in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, in 1976. He traces his interest in ceramics to his earliest memories making clay figures of bulls and cows on the muddy riverbanks. Amidst the social upheaval of anti-Apartheid riots in the 1980s, he moved to KwaPayne village, just outside Mthatha in the rural Transkei, so he could focus on his schooling. Chuma graduated with a B-Tech degree in ceramics from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in 2002 and spent a few years teaching ceramics to rural women in a poverty alleviation programme run by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.