Patrick Mavros and Quamta display some of the new African Luxury brands

Africa has not been well known for it's high end luxury brands, which is strange really if you think about it,  many of the worlds finest luxury brands source their raw materials from the continent, Diamonds, Gold, Silver, to mention but a few, notwithstanding exotic skins from various places on this grand adventure of a land.

It is therefore nice to see the emergence of some home grown African Luxury Good's brands utilising what has always been there and returning the wealth back to the country they came from.

Pictured above is a selection of products from Patrick Mavros, Born and raised in Zimbabwe, a visit to his website www.patrickmavros.com will allow you to read the full story of this colourful individuals life, one which it would be impossible for me to do justice to in this brief blog entry.  Suffice to say The brand presents an excellent selection of Sterling Silver Jewellery, Homewares, lifestyle products and some furniture, all of which speak of the wild and rich heritage of the land from which they come.  The brand and the mans true strength however is within the sculptures they produce, the elephant sculpture shown here is an example, what makes Mavros's work so impressive is that he utilises the old technique of Lost-Wax-Casting, where a mould is used just once per piece, this means every piece is essentially hand-made, and that the artist is continually improving, so the pieces simply get better with age.

Hailing from South Africa, land of Diamonds and Democracy (finally)  Quamta is a Luxury goods brand  which produces leather goods, primarily small leather accessories and slipcases.  Established in 2009 it offers a finite range of exceptionally well made products.  Each product from this brand is made by Hand, utilising local labour and local resources, thereby enriching the communities within which it works.  In terms of its range, the website www.quamta.com displays a selection of its small leather goods but seemingly exclusively in ostrich leather, both quill and foot leather, as shown above.  It does not provide any information on whether another leather option is available, however since they have a bespoke option it can be expected that any leather one wishes can be requested.  

The stand out product from Quamta is its Iphone case, pictured here, both elegant and simple, it manage to also be more than simply functional, rather ingenious, the addition of geometric cut panels of leather on either side of the case allow it to carry cards and even notes, thereby meaning that for the daily commute you could use this instead of a wallet, change in the pocket, travel pass (or oyster in london) and credit card on one side, notes on the other, iphone in the centre and bang, you just lightened your pocket by not needing a wallet anymore.  Why hasn't anyone else thought of doing this?