There’s a studio on the side of Buitenkant Street, a seeming oasis from the bustle of the busy road that cuts up the heart of the city, tracing its line from the Castle of Good Hope to the foot of Table Mountain.
House of Nammu is a welcome addition to the historic street in Cape Town, but it’s a story that begins in Rotterdam, where owner and potter Jade Ruijzenaars found clay in the ceramics workshop at the Willem de Kooning Academy.
After graduating with a prize-winning research project, a job offer brought her to Cape Town, and although the work had nothing to do with ceramics, she kept practising once a week at studios around the city. Covid was the reset, taking a tiny space on Orange Street to craft for herself, which, without any real business plan, led to the growth of Nammu and the Clay Atelier.
Orders followed, then a team, then loadshedding, which pushed the studio into the CBD and a larger home on Loop Street, along with a first store and a second at the Watershed.
Buitenkant is the next evolution, and the one she hopes to anchor in. Soft lighting, mineral tones and a gentle atmosphere invite one to wander into a beautiful world of artisanal ceramics, a space that Ruijzenaars envisions as a house for making, gathering and collaboration rather than just a shop for finished objects. As spring began to settle on the city, adding to the ambience of hand-crafted repetition that fills the studio, we caught up with her to hear the rest of the story.
1. The name points to the Sumerian goddess of creation. Could you expand on the golden thread of the feminine throughout your work, as well as the other areas that you draw inspiration from?
Nammu is the Sumerian goddess of the primordial sea and creation, and I was drawn to her because she represents this idea of everything emerging from something elemental.
The feminine has always been a thread through the brand, although I don’t want it to feel too literal. Many of our pieces are named after goddesses and feminine archetypes from different mythologies. I’m interested in femininity as something ancient, powerful, soft, imperfect and cyclical. This comes through also in the forms themselves, some of our shapes have a softness, roundness and sensuality that naturally feels feminine.
Nature is the other biggest influence. Earth, stone, landscape, the mountains around Cape Town, natural pigments and textures. I love materials that retain evidence of where they came from. Our wild clay especially embodies that because you can sometimes see small stones and minerals from the earth still sitting within a finished piece.
I’m also very inspired and guided by the art of ritual and the objects we surround ourselves with every day. A cup can just be a cup, but it can also be the thing you reach for every morning. I like making functional objects that become part of those small rituals.
2. What clays and glazes do you work with, and how much of that is sourced locally?
We use locally sourced clay bodies, but one of the most exciting parts of our practice is working with wild clay that we collect ourselves from farms and landscapes around the Western Cape. It arrives in the studio literally as earth.
We process it ourselves quite minimally, soaking it, removing larger organic matter and stones, sieving where necessary, settling it, drying it and eventually wedging it into workable clay. We deliberately don’t refine all of its character away. The minerals, variations and little imperfections are what make it beautiful.
3. Everything is handmade, so no two pieces are identical. How do you talk to customers about variation?
We see variation as part of the value of the object rather than a defect. Because everything is handmade and we don’t use moulds or slip casting, there will always be slight differences in shape, texture and size. Our clay batches can also differ from time to time because the earth itself is never exactly the same everywhere. Working with wild clay takes that unpredictability even further, and we really embrace that.
At the same time, handmade doesn’t mean anything goes. We have quality control and want pieces within a collection to feel like they belong together. But we also don’t want to remove every trace of the hand or the material, just to achieve perfect uniformity.
I think our customers understand that when they choose Nammu, they’re choosing an individual object. There are traces of the person who made it and the earth it came from, and I think that’s what makes handmade ceramics so special.
4. How do you scale a handmade product without losing the thing that makes it handmade?
For me, scaling Nammu can’t mean making ceramics behave like factory-made products. We don’t want to introduce moulds or a factory dynamic simply to produce thousands of identical pieces faster.
Instead, scaling has meant building a skilled team, creating better systems, learning, experimenting and teaching techniques so that several people’s hands can contribute to the same visual language. There are parameters for each piece, but within those parameters the maker is still present.
It also means accepting that there are limits. Sometimes the most sustainable thing for us to say is that we can only make a certain quantity within a certain timeframe. I would rather grow slightly slower than remove the humanity from the work.
5. What does the city give you that another city would not, in materials, in light, in the people you hire?
Cape Town is deeply embedded in Nammu. There is literally the earth beneath and around the city that enters our work through the wild clays we collect across the Western Cape.
But probably most important are the people. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to build this business alongside a growing team of people who are devoted, loyal and who have grown with Nammu over the years. The journey from my own small studio practice into running a business has definitely been challenging, but seeing the growth of the people within it has become one of the most rewarding parts for me. In many ways, that has become even more meaningful to me than the ceramics itself.
Cape Town also has an extraordinary creative community of craftspeople, artists, designers, growers, chefs and makers. There is a real openness to connecting and creating together here, and collaborations often happen very naturally. That exchange between different people, materials and disciplines has become a really exciting part of Nammu’s journey too.
6. Could you talk us through the workshops you offer, and the projects and collaborations you are involved in, as well as any that are on the horizon?
Teaching has grown into its own part of what we do through Clay Atelier.
We offer introductory workshops and four-week hand-building courses, as well as Clay Club, which is our ongoing membership for people who already have some experience and want regular studio time. We’re also developing more specialised workshops around ritual objects, sculptural pieces and different making and surface decorating techniques.
With the new Buitenkant space, House of Nammu, I’m interested in exhibitions, material experiments, visiting makers, tea parties, ceremonies, dinners and workshops. Things that bring different creative practices together rather than keeping ceramics isolated in its own world.
7. Could you chat a bit about your team and how your involvement has changed from creation to business operations?
Nammu began with just me, and today we have a team of eight across production, studio and retail. Some have been part of the journey almost from the beginning, which makes the business feel very personal.
As Nammu grew, my role inevitably changed. I went from spending most of my time making to suddenly managing production, staff, wholesale, shops, finances and all the realities of running a business. I’m still learning and navigating that, and trying to find the right support so I can create more space for what I’m naturally good at.
I’ve had to let go of physically making every object and instead guide the overall language of Nammu. I see myself as the creative director, but also the mamma of Nammu, developing collections, materials and collaborations whilst holding the fort.
I do miss having my hands in clay, so I’m consciously trying to find my way back to more making and experimentation too.
8. What is one piece in the range you would keep for yourself, and why that one?
I think I would choose one of our wild clay pieces, and perhaps a Rhea cup.
There is something about drinking from a material that has come directly from the landscape around you that I find very special. You can see and feel the earth in it. It’s not perfectly smooth or uniform and that’s exactly why I love it.
The Rhea is also what I think of as a ritual cup. It’s functional and simple, but it makes an everyday moment feel a little more intentional. And ultimately that’s what I want Nammu objects to do: become part of someone’s life and enhance little moments.
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Picture: Supplied.
