{"id":255361,"date":"2023-03-29T11:03:35","date_gmt":"2023-03-29T09:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/aspiring-furniture-designer-wins-competition-at-buy-local-summit\/"},"modified":"2023-03-29T11:03:35","modified_gmt":"2023-03-29T09:03:35","slug":"aspiring-furniture-designer-wins-competition-at-buy-local-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/aspiring-furniture-designer-wins-competition-at-buy-local-summit\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspiring furniture designer wins competition at Buy Local Summit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Final-year Industrial Design student at the University of Johannesburg, Tshepiso Motau, has won the Furniture Design Competition in a ceremony hosted by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic).<\/p>\n

Motau, who hails from Centurion, designed an eye-catching and colourful room divider with Ndebele patterns inspired by internationally acclaimed artist, Dr Esther Mahlangu. <\/p>\n

The University of Johannesburg conferred an honorary doctorate on Mahlangu in April 2018.<\/p>\n

The room divider, which can be folded, comes with shelves that can be assembled and dissembled depending on the space available.<\/p>\n

Motau was crowned the winner during the Buy Local Summit & Expo on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old was one of five finalists who produced innovative pieces of furniture in line with the theme of this year\u2019s competition, ‘Local is Lekker’.<\/p>\n

The annual competition is organised by the dtic in partnership with key industry stakeholders such as the South African Furniture Initiative.<\/p>\n

It is one of the Furniture Industry Masterplan programmes aimed at promoting design skills in the furniture industry.<\/p>\n

Motau said the win came as a surprise to her, as she had resigned herself to a lower spot in the top three after seeing what the other students had produced.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing in the top five was a mammoth victory worth celebrating. I really derived pride, joy and contentment from just being one of the finalists. Being crowned the winner of a national furniture design competition of this magnitude in my first attempt was really a cherry on top of the cake. I am extremely excited and lost for words,\u201d Motau said.<\/p>\n

She said her education would still be her first priority. She would like to complete her Honours Degree in Industrial Designing before thinking of a full-time career as a furniture designer and manufacturer.<\/p>\n

The main objectives of the competition are to raise and nurture design capabilities in the country; raise the image of the furniture manufacturing industry in South Africa, and to grow the industry\u2019s competitiveness by encouraging new product design and differentiation.<\/p>\n

However, as the winner, Motau has an enviable opportunity to hone her furniture design skills further.<\/p>\n

She bagged a six-month stint in a Furntech Furniture Business Technology Incubator Programme, and an internship with Homewood Furniture, which were two of her prizes for her win.<\/p>\n

She was also rewarded with a laptop by Lewis Furniture. \u2013 SAnews.gov.za<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Final-year Industrial Design student at the University of Johannesburg, Tshepiso Motau, has won the Furniture Design Competition in a ceremony hosted by the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (the dtic). Motau, who hails from Centurion, designed an eye-catching and colourful room divider with Ndebele patterns inspired by internationally acclaimed artist, Dr Esther Mahlangu.  The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":255362,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[38678],"class_list":{"0":"post-255361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-south-africa","8":"tag-sanews","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/aspiring-furniture-designer-wins-competition-at-buy-local-summit.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}