'Shaping in dull, dead earth their dreams of riches and beauty': Clay Modelling at e-Hala and Hogsback in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

Approaching Hogsback from the small university town of Alice, travellers face a wall of forested mountainside. At the base is the sprawling village of e-Hala, or Auckland, easy to ignore in the haste to climb the spectacular road to the mountain resort. Particularly at weekends, travellers are certain to encounter boys and young men along the road frantically trying to gain attention. If they stop, they will find that these youths are selling small clay models, generally of animals. These are often of striking and unusual beauty: stiff-legged, bristling hogs; proud horses reminiscent of ancient Greece; sinuous antelopes with curled and twisted antlers. Thinking back, travellers may remember having seen a youth with a plastic bag digging in a gash of red clay beside the road at the foot of the mountain pass. It is from this clay that the models are made. In this paper, we try to understand the historical process and the current social milieu that has produced these beguiling objects, sold by the poor to the relatively rich, but imbued with a vigour alien to banal airport art.