Talks
Talks are the third Tuesday of each month at 20h00.
Visitors and prospective members are welcome. Entrance is free.
We meet at The Athenaeum in Newlands, Cape Town.
Access to the Athenaeum is at the intersection of Campground Road & Mariendahl Lane. Drive through Boundary Terrace office park gates, proceed up & turn left into the dedicated Athenaeum parking area, where you can double park .
Outings
Outings are usually on the fourth Saturday of each month.
These are restricted to members only, and are not suitable for young children, nor are pets allowed.
Weekend Away
We organise a weekend away once a year, over and above the nine outings undertaken during the year.
These are limited to members only and are always self -financing trips.
For the record, since we are a not for profit society, our fees are calculated to cover our annual running costs.
2012 CALENDAR OF EVENTS
MARCH 2012 TALK
TOPIC: Ditema: Decorated Sotho Buildings
SPEAKER: Pieter Jolly/AGM
DATE: Tuesday, 20 March 2012
TIME: 19h45 for 20h00
VENUE: The Athenaeum,
Boundary Terraces, Newlands – at the intersection of Mariendahl& Campground Rds.
Ditema, the Sotho tradition of decorating houses with painted and engraved patterns and pebbles set into plaster, is fast disappearing. Less well-known than the Ndebele mural art, it a particularly beautiful form of vernacular art tradition.
In this talk, a range of examples of this traditional architectural art form will be shown, and a brief overview will be given of the history of this tradition as well as of the processes involved in placing these patterns on the walls of the houses.
Pieter Jolly is an Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Archaeology at UCT, whose special area of research is San history and rock art, specifically the history of interaction between the south-eastern San and southern Nguni and Sotho communities.
MARCH 2012 OUTING
DATE: Saturday 31 March 2012
TIME: 10h00
Following on from the February outing we visit three Farm Houses along the Liesbeeck.
Details to follow.
April 2012 TALK
TOPIC: Town layout in the Cape: the Grid versus the River-strip.
SPEAKER: Hans Fransen
DATE: Tuesday, 17 April 2012
TIME: 19h45 for 20h00
VENUE: The Athenaeum
Boundary Terraces, Newlands – at the intersection of Mariendahl& Campground Rds.
In colonial areas – whether in Roman England, English France, in America or in South Africa– a rational grid outlay was the preferred design for “planted” towns.
Hans will trace some of these designs at the Cape, often with a church at a focal point. But he will also discuss a different type, that had its origin as an agricultural settlement in which the course of a river, and of an irrigation system derived from it, determined a more irregular (and to us more picturesque!), contour-directed plan that provided for a green “river-strip” with the villagers’ dwellings on its upper fringe.
It can be seen at Clanwilliam, Tulbagh, Prince Albert, and also at the mission villages such as Mamre, Wupperthal en Genadendal.
Hans Fransen is a former chairman of VASSA and holds a doctorate from the University of Natal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch.
He is the author of standard works such as the three editions of The old buildings of the Cape (first two with Dr Mary Cook), A Cape camera and more recently Old towns and villages of the Cape.
All these are valuable reference books for VASSA members.
Until his retirement he was the director of the Michaelis Art Museum on Greenmarket Square and chairs its Society of Friends. Cycling is his passion.
April 2012 OUTING
DATE: Saturday 28 April 2012
TIME: 10h00
Bus outing to Darling (as a formally laid out grid town) and Mamre (as an informal “river-strip” town).
Details to follow
