powered by love & passion
Have you ever been to the Gold Restaurant?
Somehow even as a local we sometimes miss out on things to do in your own City. So why not having an entertaining dinner experience with music, dance and a culinary journey throughout the African continent.
In the hearts of Cape Town, just at the border, Waterkant to Green Point you will find in a red brick building, a different dining experience. The Gold restaurant is always well visited, so a booking in advance makes defiantly sense. Also the tourist industry has figured, that this spacious restaurant on several levels is a good spot to celebrate fare well dinners for groups African style.
The menu is mouthwatering and the food is presented beautifully, they pay a lot attention to detail. But not only food wise, also the African decoration everywhere shows African spirit. The African Art is not only tasted on your taste buds, no – you see it everywhere. The the plates and bowls, the colourful serviettes (which sometimes mysteriously disappear), Pictures of majestic African woman and just the little decorations everywhere. Some of the Art you find also in the little shop, and if you have a look, you will also discover our Blakstone – Crafts Art Bags.
A visit to the Gold Restaurant should be defiantly marked in your calendar. And as a local or tourist, if you don’t like the big buzz, mark it for the winter days, so you ca check out the winter menu and it will be easier to get a table.
If you like our bags above and you like to see or buy them in a store, you have a chance to do so, in Knynsa at the Featherbed nature reserve shop.
We are very happy to announce that our product range is been take up by the Featherbed Charming Tresures Shop. We are extremely pleased that our homeless and disadvantaged artists have a further platform and opportunity to display their art and earn some income.
Maybe a good tip if you plan your next weekend or holiday road trip, to make a stop at the Featherbed nature reserve. You won’t be disappointed to have visited the beauty of this nature reserve. First, you enjoy a 25-30 minute boat trip along the Knysna estuary, you pass the Knysna waterfront and 2 islands on our second largest wetland here in South Africa. As soon you arrived on the western peninsula you embark on a truck ride up the hills of the nature reserve. Now you have breathtaking views over the Knysna lagoon and the Featherbed nature reserve. If you like sustainable tourism, you are at the right place, because while you stop to take beautiful pictures you can also shoot seed balls and help to get the vegetation diverse growing after the devastating fire in June 17. After this short stop its only a short ride further before you have the optional non difficult walk of 2,2 km downwards most of the time. The view is absolutely stunning and you won’t forget this excursion. Especially if you have booked this eco experience with the lunch option. You will enjoy a scrumptious buffet with a lot of South African dishes and deserts. Just yummy! And before you leave, enjoy a stroll to the newly opened shop and you will find a selection of our Blakstone Crafts bags there. Enjoy your trip to Knysna Featherbed nature reserve, you will see it’s absolute worth it.
Junior and Phillip – our inspiration for creating the platform for talented homeless and disadvantaged street artist. We saw their talent while they were busy selling their art to make some money to survive. Cape Town is a tourist attraction and provides possibilities for street artist to sell their art to tourist wandering within our scenic city but it is not easy, if you do not have a space designated from the city council in order to sell your art.
Many art and crafts merchants as well as artist can be seen at the usual spots like Greenmarket Square or within the Companies Garden. Junior and Phillip do not have a spot within the city. They create their art in a park in a suburb called Gardens. We saw them and thought that their art should have a platform to be discovered but not in a normal Gallery way, we came to this idea to let them paint on a bags. And so the Art bag by Blakstone – Crafts was born. And with this idea we see Junior and Phillip as our pioneers to also help us to help themselves and others who are in need.
A big thank you Junior and Phillip we are happy that we could discover your art and be a part of it.
Recently we visited Mama Rosie and her children from Baphumelele in Khayelitsha, Cape Town.
But before we headed in direction to Mama Rosie, we went for shopping, as we had the beautiful opportunity to bring also food. We bought vegetables, fruits and 30 kg chicken. But we could only do so, because of our friends from Germany who were so generous to donate money for the shopping.
We had also in our mind to have some fun with the kids with bringing some colors for painting. The colors we chose are our south African colors like, black, green, white, yellow, blue and red.
As soon as we arrived some of the older boys helped us to bring the groceries to one of the several houses so that they could be distributed to all the house mamas taking care of the 107 kids in total.
We had the chance after the groceries were stored, to create beautiful Blakstone – Crafts Art Bags with 9 of the older Kids between 14 and 17 years old.
But the little ones (age 6-10) also had an opportunity to express their art by having fun and getting a bit dirty. Because their hands and feet were covered in paint. We had a big jute fabric, which we spread on the floor and after a shy start, the kids went wild. They created a beautiful hand and foot print picture which we still contemplate if we should offer it as a whole picture or if we should cut it up and make bags out of it, maybe you can help us to decide.
The creations of the older Kids turned out stunning, they painted the bags with a message of love and each of the teens were brave enough to speak a wish for the potential buyer.
Obviously, we hope that those bags been sold, so that we can donate back money for Baphumelele.
If you are interested in Mama Rosie”s orphanage and you want to help her and the kids with direct donations you can either go on her website https://baphumelele.org.za/ or get in contact with us and we can be of assistance as well.
Thank you and give us your comments what you think we should do with the big picture!
In buying a unique Art Bag you help one of our homeless and disadvantaged people who lives here in Cape Town South Africa.
Just to give you an insight how much good you could do!
We have more than 5000 homeless people just living in the city bowl of Cape Town, some of them have shack like shelters erected, some of them sleep on the streets. Inequality in general is a big problem here in South Africa as only 42 % could go into a homeless shelter because there are not enough. We have different stages of poverty, homeless who live in the streets, we have homeless who have erected some sort of shelter in the streets or free ground and we have people living in Townships in shacks or social housing. But we pretty much have no middle class, economically spoken. So that leaves the wide gap between rich and poor and the situation we face on a daily base.
Further,
homeless and disadvantaged people are a nuisance and disturbing and therefore most of the homeless people been chased away and not acknowledged as human beings.
“They should find work instead of begging”, “they should be cleaner”, “they just urinate everywhere and steal”. The government should do something”, and the list of excuses is endless.
And, when the poverty knocks at the door, nearly everybody is reluctant to give a stranger work, even if it’s only washing the car or cleaning up in the garden.
Of course, why would I invite a stranger into my personal space and trust – so that I might end up losing all my possessions, because I get robbed or worse. And this fearful thought keeps most people in the position to ignore this fact and rather be occupied by the thought that homeless people are disgusting and should rather leave, wherever that does not really matter, just away from the eyesight. Yeah and unfortunately, we could go on with the vicious cycle of poverty and criminality, because it goes hand in hand.
But,
we just forget always that this can happen in a blink of an eye and everything is gone and lost and maybe than the last resort is the streets to survive. And as it is a mix of all heritages as well of different countries of this continent – there is also a mix of professions and talents, people have. Professions and talents which have no room to display no ground to nurture within.
And therefore,
we want to create that platform to help others and be an enabler to connect people to this project from all over the world and in doing so, the opportunity for our disadvantaged and homeless people of a better life, is closer. And you helped and contributed in buying this bag.
Thank you so much,
Blakstone – Crafts
Have you ever been to the Gold Restaurant? Somehow even as a local we sometimes miss out on things to do in your own City. So why not having an entertaining dinner experience with music, dance and a culinary journey throughout the African continent. In the hearts of Cape Town, just at the border, Waterkant…
If you like our bags above and you like to see or buy them in a store, you have a chance to do so, in Knynsa at the Featherbed nature reserve shop. We are very happy to announce that our product range is been take up by the Featherbed Charming Tresures Shop. We are extremely…
Junior and Phillip – our inspiration for creating the platform for talented homeless and disadvantaged street artist. We saw their talent while they were busy selling their art to make some money to survive. Cape Town is a tourist attraction and provides possibilities for street artist to sell their art to tourist wandering within our…
Blakstone - Crafts 