Montebello Design Centre
The gift shop, clock tower and old stable area of the Montebello Design Centre.
Location31 Newlands Ave, Newlands, Cape Town, 7700
Coordinates33°58′13″S 18°27′26″E / 33.970139°S 18.457318°E / -33.970139; 18.457318
TypeArt, craft and business space
Genre(s)Art exhibitions, craft centre, community events
Opened1993 (1993)
Website
www.montebello.co.za
Artist Right Mukore of Zimbabwe located at the Montebello Design Centre sculpting a tree trunk using an electric saw.

The Montebello Design Centre is a non-profit art and craft space established in 1993 and located in Newlands, Cape Town, South Africa. The centre hosts over twenty craft workshops, shops, restaurants, and artist studios.[1][2][3]

History

Cecil Michaelis donated the Montebello site to the University of Cape Town in 1988 to setup a design centre.

Situated beneath Devil's Peak, the design centre stands in what was once a substantial tract of woods. Described on 6 May 1652 as a, "fine, large forest of very tall, straight growing trees"[4] these lands were the hunting and grazing grounds of the Khoisan Cochoqua people. Remnants of these original forests can still be seen on the lower slopes of the mountain. The Dutch East India Company established the brewer Ruttgert Menssink on the site in 1696.[5]

By the late 19th century the area was an outlying suburb of Cape Town. After passing through several owners, Daniel Cloete built the existing homestead in about 1875 that later became the South African College School's Michaelis House. The adjacent face brick stables currently housing the Montebello Design Centre were built in about 1880. The complex is considered one of the finest of its period in South Africa.[6]

Cape Town brewer Anders Ohlsson purchased the estate from Cloete in 1888 and named it Montebello.[7] Ohlsson, who established Ohlsson's Brewery on the site[8] sometime after 1881.

Montebello sits on the site of the brewery's stables which housed the horses that helped support the brewery's logistical operations.[9] The site was sold to the randlord Max Michaelis in 1919 when automotives started replacing horse-drawn wagons. His son, the artist Cecil Michaelis, first experimented with South African clays and kaolin in the late 1940s.[10]

Design centre

Prior to returning to South Africa, Cecil Michaelis' 1935 founding of Rycotewood College for the arts and skilled associated trades in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, had convinced him an equivalent institution sited at Montebello would succeed in a country where much creative expression was still seen as derivative.[11] First mooted in the 1950s,[12] this ideal would take over thirty years to be realised.

Following the expropriation of the main house and estate from the Michaelis family to house South African College Schools the remaining stables were donated to University of Cape Town in 1988 on condition that a craft and design centre would be established on it.[13][14] A further financial bequest by Cecil Michaelis allowed for the establishment of the Montebello Design Centre in 1993.[15]

Notable residencies

References

  1. ↑ "Montebello Design Centre". www.iamcapetown.com. Retrieved 2020-12-30.
  2. ↑ News, Design. "The novelty of Newlands | Design News". Retrieved 2020-12-30. {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  3. ↑ "Newlands | South African History Online". www.sahistory.org.za. Retrieved 2020-12-30.
  4. ↑ Journal of Jan van Riebeeck. Vol 1 page 37. English edition, A. A. Balkema, 1952
  5. ↑ Rogues Rebels and Runaways. Chapter 1, page 11. Nigel Penn. David Philip, 1999
  6. ↑ Montebello Stable Site, ERF 124334 Newlands Impact Assessment Stage 1. Jan 2003
  7. ↑ Southern Suburbs Tatler 11 July 1991
  8. ↑ "Shopping up a storm with mom and pop". The Mail & Guardian. 1999-12-17. Retrieved 2020-12-30.
  9. ↑ QUAGHEBEUR, HADEWIG (2000). "ADAPTIVE REUSE OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO CAPE TOWN". p. 25.
  10. ↑ Montebello Estate Cecil Michaelis
  11. ↑ Cape Times 16 April 1997
  12. ↑ Obituary for Cecil Michaelis, Tessa Graaff, UCT Monday Paper Vol 16, No 14, 1997
  13. ↑ "Register of Building Names: Montebello Stables" (PDF). University of Cape Town.
  14. ↑ "Interview with the Heads of the Montebello Design Centre". x-working Comunidade e Revista de Arte (in European Portuguese). 22 February 2018. Retrieved 2020-12-29.
  15. ↑ "About Montebello Design Centre | Newlands, Cape Town". www.montebello.co.za. Retrieved 2020-12-30.
  16. ↑ "2017 Ceramic Classes with John Bauer at Montebello Design Centre Newlands". www.capetownmagazine.com. Retrieved 2020-12-30.
  17. ↑ "David Krut". Art on the hill. 2018-06-20. Retrieved 2020-12-30.
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