Open and closed

If you are reading this, it means my website is live. So: phew to that. 

I’m writing this on a bright, snowy day. Normally I’d be in my beloved shop at this hour but for the last few weeks, we in Toronto have been enduring our second lockdown of 2020. 

The timing feels sharp. For shops like Izibele, the holidays are a flurry of shoppers, goodwill and conversation; I anticipated the joy of selling some of the bigger, more valuable items made by my South African friends (all of whom had a terrible financial 2020). The holidays can be the clincher for profitability, and this was to be Izibele’s first one!

So couldn’t be worse timing. Along with my colleagues in small retail-land, I’ve been busy ‘regrouping’ as the corporate types say. 

What does the Izibele regroup look like? Last week I started biking canisters of my delicious Justea around the neighbourhood; I’m driving a lovely Zenzulu basket up to midtown this afternoon (it’s a long distance present to the buyer’s friends who’ve just bought a house); I’m mailing Karoo Angels to New York, Oakville and to Gananoque, Ontario, doing a few deals curbside and I’m… well I’m working on this website. Tears have been shed on this website so enjoy it (only joking). (Not about the tears.)

Before I started Izibele I was a writer. When Sara — dearest friend and Izibele’s graphic designer — suggested a blog on this site it felt like yet another of many, many reasons to jump into the trading and shopkeeping life. What a lovely opportunity to stay in contact with customers, makers, friends and family. 

Izibele has needed a long gestation period. Since my mid-20s I’ve had this hallowed little picture. The dream had me visiting small communities in Africa, finding marvelous objects made with careful eyes and hands, and an artist’s drive for interest and beauty. It had me buying fairly — no haggling, no discounts for larger orders, no unreasonable deadlines — and being able tell that maker: ‘Hey I had a good day today and sold your treasures well!’. 

At the ‘selling’ end in my picture, I am alone surrounded by objects I love, in a space dedicated to them, in a ‘gemuchtlich’ (German for ‘cosy’) interior on a busy street. In this picture, my ‘regulars’ start to appear, gloriously, and I learn their names; friends drop by after school pickup; neighbours peek in to visit pieces they love, and my daughter (she was part of the dream) comes by on her bike to hang out and play Lego. A shop of my own seemed like the perfect job for me. 

Dreams often don’t come true and that’s fine — there’s value simply in the dreaming. But this one did. Things started to materialize in 2017 during a long stay in Stellenbosch, South Africa: family and work brought us there. I had time on my hands and I’d meet Zimbabwean bead crafters on the street — I’d literally swerve over to the hard shoulder in my car to marvel at a row of beaded Roosters and Pegasusses (Pegassi?). I’d go to small galleries in Cape Town and the Slow Market in Stellenbosch and drop by Magpie in Barrydale to see what beauties they were cooking up from milk and pop bottles. We’d bring these pieces back in our luggage and guests here in Toronto would marvel at them. Not one single huge, unwieldy, doesn’t-fit-in-the-overhead-bin basket or highly fragile bowl wedged in my hand luggage, caused regret. The lovely, refreshing departure from mass production and greige ‘hotel chic’ interior spaces (another blog entry on that when I’m feeling feistier) has enchanted our friends and got me through long winters. It felt very simple after that: bring more over, retail it and spread the South African craft-love all over Toronto and beyond.

Whether or not you buy anything here at my website, please give a thought to the millions of people on our planet who still make a living through craft. 

Happy holidays, 

Love
Abi