She also loves the laser cuts by Louise Spamer that mix board with fabric and hand-painted detail: “They have strong personal signatures.” Vosloo’s closest competition, she says, is the internet: “But I’ve had disappointments buying online – things don’t always live up to their illustrations. I like to see and touch pieces, and my customers do too.”
So much so that she has now opened a satellite Shoppe further across the Berea, in a sari-papered room off Antique Café in Churchill House. “The atmosphere is great,” she says happily. “It’s another fun place to Shoppe!”.
August 2015
Shoppe: an emporium of covetable curiosities
A special place for special pieces
As the name suggests, Shoppe is a shop with a difference – opening off Durban’s quaint Market restaurant courtyard with its tree-ringed fountain and packed with covetable curiosities selected by owner Sonia Vosloo from creatives across the country.
The entrance is guarded by a cheeky yellow plastic “daxie” bench piled with cushions by Sam Cross; and quirky Black Cat peanut butter and Marmite jar seats by Cape couple Bruce Goodall and Jeanne van den Heever, delicate glass gardens by Lance Surgeson and Paul Rabinowitz, and wire proteas by Babette Noble spill out on to the cobble-stones.
Image: Angela Buckland
“This is a special space. It felt right for special pieces,” Vosloo says. Her background is in clothing design and merchandising but being married to the merchandise director of MRP Home, she has a strong interest in décor and they share a passion for art. “When it came to shopping for gifts, I battled to find beautiful, different, locally made pieces. There was a gap in the market, and three years ago I went for it.” At first she targeted limited-edition pieces by big names, from ceramics by Mervyn Gers to repurposed creations by Heath Nash, “but Durban people aren’t always prepared to pay.
"Now my focus is on fresh but affordable pieces and encouraging new talent.” She stocks only what she loves: “I don’t take things on consignment like most places, which work off commission and can return what they don’t sell. I commit to pieces by buying them.” With her fashion past, she has a keen sense of trends but is not bound by them. “Proteas and bunnies are popular, and I’ve got fun variations on both, but I want artists to create their own unique pieces, and I collaborate with them to encourage that.” Her current passion is himmeli – geometric metal mobiles, and she stocks some by Elsje van der Merwe.
She also loves the laser cuts by Louise Spamer that mix board with fabric and hand-painted detail: “They have strong personal signatures.” Vosloo’s closest competition, she says, is the internet: “But I’ve had disappointments buying online – things don’t always live up to their illustrations. I like to see and touch pieces, and my customers do too.”
So much so that she has now opened a satellite Shoppe further across the Berea, in a sari-papered room off Antique Café in Churchill House. “The atmosphere is great,” she says happily. “It’s another fun place to Shoppe!”.
40 Gladys Mazibuko (Marriott) Rd /
91-93 Churchill Rd, Morningside, Durban
083 626 6088.