The Ernst Equation
In conversation with Jan Ernst about art, process, and practice.
South Africa’s expansive semi-arid desert region known as the Karoo is defined by sweeping plains and distinctive landforms. It’s here, in a small community with rich artistic ties, that Jan Ernst, who is now based in Cape Town, spent his formative years. Originally trained as an architect in his native South Africa and Spain, Ernst later turned to ceramics, creating a series of textured vessels and candelabras riffing on oceanic coral and ant mounds that quickly garnered international attention. Since then, he has amassed a singular portfolio of organic yet otherworldly works that span collectible objects, custom art pieces, and light fixtures—each teeming with preternatural life.
After almost five years of practice, the multihyphenate artist and designer felt compelled to sharpen his personal connections to his country’s unique environment, returning to those influential places and spaces across the Karoo that had shaped his adolescence. “I don’t know what we’re going to find when we get there,” he jokingly recalls saying when enlisting two friends to join the 2024 expedition, “but let’s just go and explore it.” The more than 2,000-kilometre road trip proved transformative. “When I came back, I was flooded,” he adds. “I wanted to start designing immediately.”
The result was Cavus: a nine-part series of hand-crafted white stoneware furniture and lighting united by their primal forms, sun-bleached surfaces, and gentle curves. “The whole collection was inspired by that landscape,” he says, “how the hills break out of the earth, how pools have carved beautiful hollows out of the rocks.”
While each made-to-order piece is available through the Objects With Narratives design gallery in Brussels and Geneva, the trio of tiered side tables reflect this influence most clearly. Their undulating stacked profiles echo the cadence of small hills known as kopjes and layers of sedimentary rock found elsewhere, transitioning from a smooth base to the etched skin of the broad top band (also available with a bronze top plate, hand-inscribed with a Dremel). The ovoid wall cabinet—also composed of Ernst’s proprietary clay mixture—abstracts topographic silhouettes into even more surreal territory. Meanwhile, the pair of sconces, table lamp, and pendant light lift more directly from the Valley of Desolation. Here, outcroppings and caverns translate into gestural contours illuminated by the glow of a hidden light source that grants each piece its ethereal aura. “Nature is a big driver in what we create,” he says of not only Cavus but also his ongoing multimedia works, “because nature belongs to everyone.”
