By
Margaretta wa Gacheru (28 January 2019) with photo assistance from Donnae Belle
Magical gate of entry into Nani's 'glass menagerie' . photo by Donnae Belle
Tennessee Williams wrote ‘The Glass Menagerie’, but I find it’s also an apt title for what I experienced on my recent travels to Kitengela Glass Workshop and Art Centre.
Tennessee Williams wrote ‘The Glass Menagerie’, but I find it’s also an apt title for what I experienced on my recent travels to Kitengela Glass Workshop and Art Centre.
By now, Nani
Croze’s original experiment bringing ‘jua kali’ hand-blown glass works to Kenya
is renowned, both locally and globally. (She’s featured in the current issue of
African Forbes’ new Women’s edition.)
She started making
glass art in 1979 after having established herself as a muralist, painter and sculptor
who created the ‘Mother and Child’ fountain at the front entrance of Maendeleo
House.
She even
climbed scaffolds at Maendeleo to create the monumental painting (which is
still there) of the Kenya mama holding her fist high in salute to the freedom
that Kenyans are meant to enjoy.
But it’s the
sprawling Kitengela estate that’s literally littered with glass and cement
sculptures that arrests the visitor’s eyes even before she enters Nani’s quirky
glass menagerie.
Other
visitors have called Kitengela Glass everything from a glass paradise and glass
museum to a glorious get-away where you can stay in one of Nani’s glistening stained-glass
huts. The huts all have a Maasai manyatta feel to them, perhaps out of respect
for the region her place occupies in the heart of Maasai land.
Or perhaps
it’s because the simple manyatta structure is how she began building her new
home after having lived with her first family on a tea plantation in Tigoni.
Either way,
architecture is another rustic feature of Nani’s creativity.
Most of her
buildings are constructed with a mix of mud, cement and glass. That includes
the mini-manyatta where her layer hens stay. She used a similar design for the
quarters where her workers (including their families) reside.
These are the
people who assist Nani everywhere from her organic garden and animal farm to
her guest (glass hut) suites, stain-glass workshops and the jua-kali
construction site where you’ll find Patrick Kibe creating everything from wind-chimes
and bird-feeders to butterflies and hats out of recycled glass, metals and
plastics.
Patrick Kibe just made this wind chime with recycled glass and scrap recycled metal at Nani's
But it’s the
animals that constitute Nani’s main menagerie, some alive, others glass and
stone. At the entrance of Kitengela glass, you’ll find a whole ‘zoo’-full of
glassy creature sculptures including a stained-glass dragon, giant gorilla,
baboons, wide-winged birds and other miscellaneous beings.
A few more are
up the user-friendly ramp leading to the Mechtel Gallery where artworks by Kenyan
painters can be found alongside Nani’s life-size leopard and other glass wall
hangings.
But it’s in
Nani’s inner sanctum that one encounters the menagerie of living creatures.
That’s because Nani, in a past life was one of Konrad Lorenz’s ‘goose girls’.
Lorenz was the Nobel prize-winning animal behaviorist who gave Nani the
opportunity to launch her animal-loving life professionally. She has mixed her
art and animal-loving ever since as one will see immediately, upon arrival at
Kitengela Glass.
One might
bump into a meandering camel as I did several months back. Missy was so tame
that she and I became fast friends. Sadly, she ate poisonous berries that
nobody knew were growing along the camels’ walkway. She passed on before
Christmas and it has taken Nani time to get over her demise. But she was awaiting
the arrival of a new camel last weekend when I went visiting.
On your way
to tea with Nani, you are also bound to encounter a horde of geese, ducks and
possibly a peacock along the way.
But it’s around Nani’s glass mosaic tea table
that one will seriously discover just how much this amazing artist thrives on
animals.
She just got
a new Rottweiler pup (since she recently lost her beloved but ancient Tolstoy).
In all she has up to a dozen lovely dogs at her feet at any one time.
Let the sleeping Rotweiller Archie lie for a while
The dogs don’t
have a problem with all the Guinea fowl, geese or red-backed sparrows that
frequent Nani’s outdoor tearoom which is gracefully encased in tree branches
and multiple bird feeders that attract an infinite variety of feathered fellows.
Sadly, two
of my most favorite birds who were family members of Nani’s menagerie passed on
recently. The crested crane was most endearing despite her loving to nibble on
whatever cake Nani’s master chef Mary had baked that day.
But the bird
that was most difficult for Nani to lose was Vulchie, the beloved Egyptian
vulture she had lived with for decades. Vulchie was a wise and wonderful bird
who walked around Nani’s ‘court’ as if he were the king reigning over the
menagerie. He’ll be immortalized soon in a book Nani’s producing.
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