Randburg
— — the jacaranda week, before the summer storms.
Not only on a wall.
“A residential and commercial spread on the northern edge of Johannesburg, where Witwatersrand ridges flatten into the suburbs. The streets fill with purple in late October when the jacarandas open, then again in February when the highveld thunderheads build over the koppies in the afternoon. Brightwater Commons sits at the centre of it. Nobody calls it the Waterfront anymore, but everyone still knows the clock tower.
Randburg, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Randburg lies in the City of Johannesburg metropolitan municipality, in Gauteng province, on the Highveld plateau at roughly 1,610 metres above sea level. It was constituted as a separate white municipality in 1959 and absorbed into the unified City of Johannesburg in 2000 after the end of apartheid-era local government. The area is bordered by Sandton to the east and Roodepoort to the west, and is crossed by the Braamfontein Spruit, a tributary of the Jukskei River. Suburbs include Ferndale, Bryanston West, Northcliff, and Cresta.
The highveld has two skies. From October the jacarandas — non-native, planted along most older Johannesburg streets in the early 20th century — open into a purple canopy that lasts about three weeks. By December the rainy season is in full force, with afternoon thunderheads building over the koppies and dropping forty millimetres of rain in twenty minutes before clearing. Winters are dry, cold at night, and the air smells of veld grass and woodsmoke from Soweto in the south.
Randburg is not a tourist district in the way Sandton or Maboneng are; it is where Johannesburgers live, shop, and meet. Brightwater Commons, formerly the Randburg Waterfront, opened in 1995 around an artificial lake and is still the area's commercial anchor. Cresta Shopping Centre, opened 1985, is one of the country's older enclosed malls. The Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden lies a short drive west, with the Witpoortjie Falls and a resident pair of Verreaux's eagles on the cliffs above.