In Her Words - New Jewelry from South Africa
Dear Ibu Allies,
My name is Katherine-Mary Pichulik. I am the founder and creative director of PICHULIK. My work began as a hobby—the soothing repetition of wrapping, sewing, and embellishing rope was a way to calm my busy mind. People would insist on buying these creations off my neck, and quickly a demand arose. PICHULIK was officially born in 2013 at my kitchen table in Cape Town.
Brought up in a single-working-mother household, I come from a matrilineage of strong, resourceful, working women, and grew up surrounded by incredible aunts and feminine role models living lives of adventure, self-expression, and authenticity. It was the eighties and early nineties, and I have always associated their bold jewelry with women's agency and power.
Since the Neolithic period, women have used jewelry to connect kin, express spiritual and social status, and share stories of ancestry and connection. PICHULIK re-imagines this heritage and uses the jewelry vernacular to share empowering feminine narratives that provide agency to both the wearer, and the maker. From our small beginnings, PICHULIK has grown into a thriving atelier with seventeen women and two men.
Members of the PICHULIK team.
We are a multicultural, pan-African team including Cape Malay and Xhosa heritage; and we mentor and train our team members to grow into higher-skilled jobs within the organization. Our designs are intentionally handcrafted to build the social equity of our crafters and preserve their skills—each piece is imbued with story and symbolic meaning. We invest in local producers and supply chains, prioritizing women-led entrepreneurs and local procurement and manufacturing, creating an exponential effect within the greater South African ecosystem. These decisions have all been made to align our commitments to female employment, skill development, and agency in Africa.
When ethical retail partners, such as Ibu, choose to showcase our designs and share our message with their community of like-minded allies, they boost our ability to continue to craft an ethical, impactful, and creative design business in our homeland.
We see this cross-continental exchange as a beautiful, handcrafted gesture between like-minded women. We feel honored to adorn you, to handcraft memories and messages that create an equitable global community, where women support other women. May our talismans bestow you with the courage, self-worth, and inspiration to be your most expressed and wholly version of yourselves. All of our unique gifts are needed at this time.
With love,
Katherine-Mary Pichulik
Founder and Creative Director, Pichulik
