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Post Office
Elliotdale, Eastern Cape
Yolande FRIEND: Artist tiled panel
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Contact Artefacts | MenuHomeUpfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon | Post Office Yolande FRIEND: Artist tiled panel | | ||||||
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Click to view map Coordinates: | The Post Office is a small scale Baker-style building under a hipped corrugated iron roof, originally with three arched openings on the street facade which formed a covered loggia. The massing, architectural proportions, details and limited palette of materials used in the Post Office building are testament to the design skills of the architects of the Public Works Department at that time. A feature of the street facade are the buttresses which bookend the building. Each buttress has two steeply sloping planes where the buttress reduces to meet with the upper face of the wall. The building still enjoys a good spatial relationship with the street and the public - with no perimeter fence or wall. The paved interface between the street and the building works well as a public gathering space. The arch on the right hand side has since been closed and the other two have had the semi-circular arches closed with the infill supported on flat lintels. The 'memory' of the original arched openings can however be seen on the plastered wall surface. The two flat arched openings are now flanked on the right hand side by a large bulbous, salt-glazed J Kirkness Ltd. pot. Two Ceramic Studio tile panels flanked the original loggia, both painted by Yolande FRIEND and both dated 1938. The panel on the right hand side comprises a group of males - probably amaBomvana - and some goats within a landscape with trees and huts. The composition is centred around two men squatting on the ground with one of them smoking tobacco or cannabis through a pipe (probably an ox horn) that contains water. The panel on the left hand side comprises a group of women and young girls - probably also amaBomvana - and some chickens within a landscape with trees and huts. The composition is centred around two women using a traditional grinding stone. Fortunately the building is still used as a Post Office. The interior has however been changed. Blue painted banks of Post Office Boxes have been installed within the original loggia. [William MARTINSON, July 2020] Books that reference Post Office
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