Soft spoken, humble and with expressive blue eyes, Cronjé Lemmer is one of the most talented artists that is a Potchefstroom legend.
For many decades he was the preferred fashion designer for the wives of political giants and other celebrities. In August 2023 a book appeared about the life and work of Cronjé Lemmer. “Uit die ‘Huis van Cronjé Lemmer’, ’n Collage van Kuns, Klere & Kletspraatjies.” (From the ‘House of Cronjé Lemmer, a Collage of Art, Clothes and Chats).
This portrait of Cronjé Lemmer, in pastels, hangs in his house.
The book was the brainchild of Hestia Victor, an anthropologist and entrepreneur, who, in her own right is a celebrated artist. In 2014 she did not only win the visual arts category during the Talent Festival on the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, but was declared overall winner of the Talent Festival, a spot mostly claimed by performing artists.
Hestia took classes in fashion design from Cronjé and became aware of the magnitude of memories Lemmer (74) has accumulated over the years. Augmented with many scrap books containing photographs, newspaper clippings and magazine articles, Hestia convinced Cronjé that his story should be told. He told the stories and she wrote the book.
The launching of the book took place in Cronjé’s house, which is more than just a dwelling. Every room is an expression of his artistic talents.
A stencilled wall design turned Cronjé’s bathroom into a work of art in its own right.
Fashion designer of note
Anybody who has lived in Potchefstroom during the 1970s and 1980s would have been aware that a fashion designer for important people in the country resided in Potchefstroom.
Cronjé opened his fashion design studio in September 1972 in a newly-built arcade, known as the Santam Arcade. His good friend Erhardt Grobbelaar had a flower shop in the same Arcade and told him about a vacant shop next to his.
“I opened the shop with one order for a dress,” Cronjé remembered. It later grew and he was able to appoint more staff.
Soon his fame grew through newspaper reports, radio interviews and appearing on television. (Television only came to South Africa officially in January 1976.) Over the years Cronjé, his fashion and his art, appeared numerous times in the Potchefstroom Herald. He also contributed as a column writer.
This photo of a creation by Cronjé appeared in 1982 in a matric farewell fashion supplement of the Potchefstroom Herald. The photo was taken outside Cronjé’s studio in the Santam Arcade.
A former Potchefstroom resident, Sibel Schnitter, who was also a very good friend and a pistol shooting partner of his mother, Marie, then lived in Pretoria. Apart from this she worked as a model and was an excellent businesswoman. Cronjé decided that his second shop should be where Sibel is, hence the choice of Pretoria. The perfect premises was found in Sunnyside Galleries, with space for the shop floor, fitting-room and kitchen. A spiral staircase led to a workroom and toilet on the first floor.
To launch the shop, a fashion parade was held in the fashionable Burgerspark Hotel in September 1976 with models from the famous Matty Reid stable. Sadly Sibel and her husband passed away in a car accident a mere five months later.
However, Cronjé gained a formidable client when Mrs Tinie Vorster, the wife of the Prime Minister Adv John Vorster, one day walked past the shop saw a suit in the window consisting of a rust-coloured silk jacket with a matching skirt. She tried the suit on, which fitted her like a glove and she became a regular client.
Cronjé became Mrs Vorster’s preferred designer and at one time she told Cronjé that she only had clothes designed by him in her wardrobe!
Almost 20 years later, in 1995, Mrs Vorster wore an outfit by Cronjé when she and the wives of other presidents met Nelson Mandela.
In 1975 Cronjé was invited by Mrs Betsie Verwoerd, wife of Dr HF Verwoerd, Prime Minister Vorster’s predecessor, to create an exclusive collection to celebrate the Year of the Woman. This was in aid of a children’s fund of the Maria van Riebeeck Club.
At the height of his fame amongst the politically important wives in the country, eight of them wore his creations to one of the openings of Parliament.
From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s numerous organisations asked Cronjé to stage fashion shows. He says that his memories from the 1980s are mostly about the huge success his creations generated and the political unrest in the country.
In 1992 he was invited to contribute ten outfits to a fashion show in aid of the cadet orchestra of the Potchefstroom Gimnasium, his alma mater.
The boy from Vyfhoek
After being born in Delareyville, Cronjé grew up on an agricultural holding in the Vyfhoek area outside Potchefstroom. He attended primary school at the old Vyfhoek School, which later became Baillie Park Primary School.
The building of the old Vyfhoek School. Even before the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), in 1898, a school was founded at Vyfhoek. This came to an end during the War. A school for children in the nearby Potchefstroom concentration camp, became a school for war orphans. This became the Vyfhoek Primary School. This building was the second of the school and stayed in use until 1966 when the new Baillie Park Primary School was opened. Photo: Potchefstroom Herald
Cronjé knew that he wanted to be a fashion designer before he went to school. “I absolutely coveted an eighteen inch (45,7 cm) fashion doll to make outfits for. As a primary school boy, I saved for months to buy such a doll. One afternoon I went to town with my grandmother and grandfather Lemmer to go and choose a doll at the shop. I excitedly entered the shop whilst my grandmother and grandfather waited in the car outside. After a while I came back to the car without the doll and my grandfather asked where the doll is. I explained to him how disappointed I was. Even after months of saving, I still did not have enough money for the doll.”
His grandfather received his pension that specific day and gave him the money for the doll. The doll was named after Priscilla Presley.
Many outfits were made for Priscilla and in the year he was in Standard Nine (now Grade 11), he received prizes at the Rand Easter Show for the outfits he made for the doll.
During the centenary celebrations of the Potchefstroom Agricultural Show in April 1967 he also won prizes for the outfits his dolls wore. He was a pupil at Potchefstroom Gimnasium, where he was also a member of the Drama Society. In a book, published during the centenary of the school in 2007, Cronjé is listed as one of the noteworthy former pupils of the school.
Cronjé remembered:
Teachers at school always ask you: ‘what do you want to do when you grow up?’ One time I answered that I want to be a fashion designer. The boys burst out laughing, because in the 1960s, when I was at school, this was not regarded as a proper job for a man.
When they laughed like that, I thought: you can laugh, brother, one day I am going to earn your whole salary with one dress . . . and I did!
This photo was taken when Cronjé was a first-year student at the PU for CHE. He is working on his mom’s antiquated Singer hand-driven sewing machine.
After a year doing compulsory military service, he registered at the PU for CHE. In 1971 he graduated with a BA degree in speech and interpretation, drama and art history. In 2019, the year Cronjé turned 70, NWU&U, the alumni magazine of the North-West University, featured him and wrote:
‘I wanted to study fashion design but the university did not offer it. I decided that drama would be a good substitute.’ He was soon contracted to design the costumes for university art and theatre productions and the Alabama Student Company.
Drum majorettes’ dresses too short
Not all his designs met with the standards of the university. In 1978 Cronjé designed the costumes worn by the drum majorettes of the PU for CHE, his alma mater. The elegant dresses, in the signature colour of the university, maroon, sported a stylistic version of the candelabrum which was part of the emblem of the PU for CHE. This was painted in gold in a row on the front of the dresses.
The Hostel Council (Koshuisraad) officially complained that the dresses were too short and the patronage of the drum majorettes with the Student Council was suspended. Cronjé remembered that early on in the design process, questions were raised about the length – or rather shortness – of the dresses and as a joke he had a row of tassels stitched on the seams.
Cronjé kept the cutting from a newspaper with a photograph where the lead conductor of the drum majorettes, a theology student, measured the length of one of the dresses and found it to be within the prescribed rules of the university!
The 1978 drum majorettes of the PU for CHE in action on Olen Park during the intervarsity with Kovsies. Note the tassels on the seams, an attempt to lengthen the dresses to make it more acceptable to authorities at the PU for CHE. Photo: 1978 Die Besembos
Two things happened in 1991 which changed the direction of Cronjé’s life. His beloved mother, Marie Lemmer, passed away and he closed his shop in Pretoria. “My mother’s death was very difficult for me and I looked for something that could keep me (and my thoughts) busy at night.”
A whole new world
By 1991 he was back at the university and enrolled to do an etching course that was presented at the former PU for CHE. After seeing a collagraph demonstration by Annelise Bowker, he immediately knew that this was the technique that would shape his art.
Collagraphy is a printing technique which involves building up rather than cutting away a low relief surface. The textured collage is coloured in oil paint and embossed onto cotton paper by running it through an etching press. This print mirrors the low relief surface of the original collage.
At the time his fashion design business went into decline. Many of his former clients were the wives of politicians and due to the new political dispensation did not have a need any more for his services.
In 1996 he sold his industrial sewing machine and decided beforehand to use the money to buy an etching press. The quotations for the press were higher than the selling price of the sewing machine. When delivered he received the final invoice, and to his delight found that the amount was the same as the amount he received for the sewing machine. This was due to a discount given by the vendor.
Moreover, a few weeks later an organisation for ladies included his house and studio in an art safari. He sold five of the seven collagraphs he exhibited, again for the same amount as the price of the etching press!
This compelled him to put a Bible verse on his press.
The Bible verse on Cronjé’s press. The verse came to him one Sunday morning while he was paging through his Bible before church.
According to Cronjé this press was and still is for him the most wonderful toy he ever had. This opened a beautiful new world for him.
Apart from local exhibitions, he took part in the first Ukkasie Afrikaans Art Festival, held in London, United Kingdom in 2001.
In 2003 he, and his long-time friend and fellow-artist, Erhardt Grobbelaar, was invited to exhibit in Malta. This was after a chance encounter with a German lady who lived in Malta, Ingrid Kidder. Although some of Erhardt’s works were exhibited, only Cronjé travelled to Malta. The title of the exhibition was “A Glimpse of Africa”. It was opened by an art history lecturer at the University of Malta. After the opening the curator of gallery, where the exhibition, took place came to him and said. “We’ve never had an exhibition like this.” Thirty-one of the fifty-two works he took with were sold!
The day after the exhibition opened Cronjé presented a workshop in collagraphy for the art students at the university. An etch press was not available and they used a rolling pin to press the etches! The strongest student was roped in to do the pressing.
By way of Ingrid Kidder’s contacts, he was invited in 2006 by the regional mayor of Stechlitz in Berlin to exhibit there. While there, he wondered why he was invited there. The answer came when a woman came to him during the evening of the opening. She cried so much she couldn’t speak. Her friend explained that the woman’s daughter was married to an American helicopter pilot, serving in Afghanistan. She bought one of his depictions of an Irish blessing.
“It was unbelievable to me that I, a South African, created an Irish blessing at the tip of Africa, took it all the way to Germany to be bought by a German woman, from where it would travel to America and then to Afghanistan!”
In 2007 he had the opportunity to stay in one of the five artists’ studios in the Cité Internationale des Arts, owned by the South African government. Application had to be made to the South African National Association of Visual Arts. In March 2007 he took part in an exhibition held there.
My thoughts while writing this was ‘you can’t keep a good man down’. In spite of setbacks, losses and changing times, Cronjé Lemmer and his art still prevails.
For more information on the book, kindly email info.cronjelemmer@gmail.com.
