Out of South Africa.(South African designs and designers)(Brief Article)

If linen-maker Gary Searle has learned anything in the past five years, it's that Africa sells. As managing director of Johannesburg-based textile house St. Leger & Viney, he used to produce "very Eurocentric collections," he says. "Lots of roses." After Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990, Searle created the company's first South African- themed linen collection, with images based on early maps and scenes of African life. Named Rourke's Drift, site of a famous battle between the Zulus and the English, the line was featured in Architectural Digest, and customers at home and abroad snapped it up. More recently, Searle launched an annual African collection; in the past five years, business has grown twentyfold and African designs now make up 20 percent of the company's total sales. "It's astounding," says Searle.

Similar changes are taking place in all spheres of South African design. Long beholden to European esthetics, which were initially imposed by colonists and more recently imported by Westerners who flocked to the country after the fall of apartheid, South African designers are now forging--and finding an enthusiastic market for--a more indigenous style. Tin roofs and corrugated iron, staples of township architecture, are starting to creep into upscale neighborhoods that have long been dominated by faux Tuscan and Provencal villas. Interior designers are crafting chic, modern furniture and accessories that draw upon more subtle African elements than Zulu spears and shields. "Design should be thought-provoking, not obvious," says Cape Town designer Jeremy Stewart, 34. "You don't see Viking horns in Scandinavian design, do you?"

Travelers can view the new style at Johannesburg International Airport, where the Stewart-designed Virgin Atlantic departure lounge opened last September. He and his team from Design House used rich oranges, reds and browns, the colors of the African soil, to depict the city as a "gateway to Africa." A wall of glass balls suggests both traditional beadwork and the gold mines that built the city. Textures were juxtaposed to underscore the country's own divided personality: steel- mesh columns with white river stones, a granite wall behind the glass bar. "Johannesburg is about contrasts," says Stewart. "Rich/poor, industrial/rural, developed/natural. We tried to reflect that." The result is hip, modern--yet still comfortable.

This new confidence is a striking departure from the "poor cousin" attitude that pervaded the country under apartheid. "South Africans used to just take ideas from Europe and ignore what we have here," says Stewart. Increasingly, the reverse is true: customers overseas seem to be snapping up all that's South African. "We do a huge amount of exporting to Europe and the United States. Lots of people are doing an African room," says Sally van Hoogstraten of Van den Berghs, a specialty furniture store in Cape Town. Clay and Colista Yates of Crowley, Texas, visited her store in the spring of 2000 and liked it so much they ordered two leather sofas made ...