Humans have incredible powers of pattern recognition. The way we process information allows us to form connections between subjects, even when they might not be instantly obvious – and even when they might not be there in the first place. Debuting at Objects With Narratives in 2025, the Cavus Collection by Jan Ernst is inspired by the arid plains and shifting sand of the Karoo, a semi-desert region of Ernst’s native South Africa. Playfully embodying the space between furniture, landscape, and creature, the collection expertly welcomes biomimetic qualities into the home.
This table features three ridged plateaus, each slightly larger than the last. As each layer widens, a new gradient is formed, beholden to the light raking across the textured form. Each is sculpted by hand, allowing human touch to shape the ridges, every surface unique. Almost mimicking a canyon in the regularity of the layers, an ancient, knowing quality is imbued within the forms, awakening structures and neurons from long ago.
When off, the delicate facets of the Cavus Sconce 02 are in stark contrast, light making sense of the hand-wrought vertices of the clay. Shifting tones recall sand dunes alive with wind, ever-changing yet monumental in scale. When on, warm tones of illumination create scales of warmth on the interior, intentional obfuscation lending itself well to diffused light.
The Cavus Pendant offers a similarly inviting, warm tone, contrasting nicely with the slight grey tone of the clay. Light emerges from under a hooded form, the layers of solidity a cohesive signature of the collection.
The Cavus Table Lamp, shown below, offers a tabletop member of the family. As much a cloud floating idly by as dunes in the distance, the shifting shape is steadied by a cylindrical base, grounding the purely organic form in something inherently humane: the column.
Jan Ernst is a South African designer, spanning several disciplines in his practice – including but not limited to art, sculpture, and spatial design. A fascination with the delicate yet complex structures of nature inform his work, bridging the gap between our thought processes as humans and the wonders of the organic world. Through these explorations of form, Ernst asks us to explore the similarities between the beauty of nature and humanity.
To learn more about the Cavus Collection by Jan Ernst, visit objectswithnarratives.com.
Photography courtesy of Objects With Narratives.