Kyoko Kimura Morgan’s thatch roof has just been serviced. One of the few remaining thatching families in the Western Cape have inserted fresh, golden yellow Albertinia Reeds at even intervals throughout the existing browns — it has a sort of polka dot, leopard print effect. Even without this, Kyoko’s home has a storybook quality: warm timbers and hand-plastered walls in a ceiling-free mezzanine design look out over the swimming pool that turned into a fishpond during a recent drought, a vegetable garden complete with seven chickens, the rolling Clovelly fynbos hills, and the Atlantic Ocean beyond.
 
To walk through Kyoko’s home and point out the most visually interesting objects is to discover the breadth of her creative skill. She’s a keen sewer, mending and patching to breathe new life into many a torn sweater, jacket and canvass sneaker, for which she is a walking billboard. Broken plates find their way into her fauna-themed mosaics, and ceramics run the gamut from a phone stand to little birds perched on the outside balcony railing, sometimes ruffling their real-life doppelgänger’s feathers. She dipped in and out of painting for a year, producing portraits of her husband and child that, like everything else she’s made, has an effortless excellence about them. Kyoko embodies her work: art made free from ego, crafted with a collaborative spirit and a utilitarian point of view. And, crucially, a sense of humour: “We can laugh about other people’s silliness,” she says, “but the joy is purest when we laugh about ourselves.”