Erich Mayer's depiction of the vernacular hut and multiple hut building tradition

• Main Author: Naude, M
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: South African Journal of Art History 2010
• Subjects: Cape Dutch building; Landscape
• Online Access: http://encore.tut.ac.za/iii/cpro/DigitalItemViewPage.external?sp=1000879

Erich Mayer is not considered as one of South Africa's well-known and significant artists. Regardless of this, South Africa has inherited a few thousand drawings and watercolour paintings from Mayer that are of incalculable value to historians and cultural historians. His work has also not been "discovered" and exploited by architectural historians interested in South African vernacular architecture. Mayer visited various regions in South Africa and made drawings of the simple vernacular homesteads and other structures he saw on the farms and in the smaller villages and hamlets. Most of the buildings have now probably disappeared and the drawings are the only evidence of building types that otherwise could only have survived through oral traditions and legends. The buildings vary from beehive structures covered with grass mats in the N orth West, "kapsteil" dwellings in N amaqualand, to Bushveld dwellings with gables and thatched roofs. Mayer also made a contribution to the recording ofthe crude shelters the prisoners of war erected in the prisoner of war camp on St Helena, where he was sent as prisoner of war during the Anglo-Boer War (1899- 1902). Even though these structures were not erected on South African soil, they reflected the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Boers who were imprisoned.