Farmers Market Platform
A shared studio where emerging makers learn the craft and find their voice.
A shared studio where emerging makers learn the craft and find their voice.
Set in the heart of Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, Bohlabela is a vibrant hub offering a platform for emerging artisans across three disciplines — weaving, leatherwork, and ceramics — under one roof.
Eighteen artisans are currently in residence, each working alongside a master mentor through a paid two-year cycle. For many, it is the first proper studio they have ever worked in.
By year two, most apprentices are running their own small lines — placed directly into Kulani retail, market, and wholesale channels, with their name on every piece.
The Story
From a borrowed room to a working studio with three kilns and a loom.
From a borrowed room to a working studio with three kilns and a loom.
Bohlabela began the way most good things in the lowveld do — slowly, and around a table. A handful of weavers and leatherworkers had been meeting in a borrowed church hall, sharing tools and trading techniques, long before there was a name for what they were doing.
When Kulani arrived, it did not arrive with a plan. It arrived with months of listening. What the makers wanted was not charity, but a room of their own — a place to practise, to fail quietly, and to learn from someone who had walked the path before them.
Today the hub runs three disciplines side by side. Apprentices sign on for a two-year cycle and are paid a monthly stipend while they train, so they can give their full attention to the craft rather than the next meal. The room is rarely silent: a loom clatters in one corner, a kiln ticks as it cools in another.
Every piece that leaves the studio is named and dated. It carries the maker’s name, the studio they trained in, and the year they joined — a small act of authorship that, for many, is the first time their work has been signed at all.
“Working as a group helps us learn from others. Here I am not only making — I am becoming a teacher too.”
— MASTER WEAVER, BOHLABELA ARTS HUB
The Makers
The people behind the work.
Three of the artisans who shape Bohlabela every day — named, profiled, and paid directly.
Master Weaver · Mentor
Mavis Khoza
Fourteen years at the loom. Now leading the weaving studio and mentoring six apprentices through their first cycle.
Thandi Nkuna
Grace Mathebula
Goals & Impact
What Farmers Market Platform sets out to do.
Impact
Traceability & Transparency
Every piece, connected to a person.
Every product from this project is connected to a named artisan and a specific place. As Kulani’s traceability system develops, each piece will carry a QR code linking directly to its full origin story.
Bohlabela pieces are stamped with the studio, the maker, and the year the apprentice joined the hub.
Traceability Stamp
This project’s QR story is coming. Full traceability launching late 2026.
Inside Farmers Market Platform.
Behind-the-scenes from the hub — process, hands, and the people at work. Click any photo to enlarge.
Pieces made at Farmers Market Platform.
Buying a piece routes earnings straight back into the studio that made it. Shop links go live once Shopify is set up.
Woven by Mavis, Bohlabela
Woven by Mavis, Bohlabela
Woven by Mavis, Bohlabela
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