The Owl House and surrounding Camel Yard contain over 300 concrete and glass sculptures created by Helen Elizabeth Martins and her assistants. Almost all of the sculptures face towards the east, many depicting a pilgrimage to a suitably positioned nativity scene. Amongst the various sculptures Martins totem animal, the owl (which she associated with intuition, insight, and wisdom) forms an underlying theme.

Helen Martins was almost 50 before she started decorating the Owl House and creating her marvelous sculptures. She is now considered South Africas foremost Outsider Artist, although during her life she was faced with derision and suspicion.

Throughout the Camel Yard, bottle-skirted meises (girls) act as hostesses, wearing traditional Dutch caps. Also in the foreground is one of several glass-encrusted sun worshipers, ecstatically bending over backwards to greet the morning sun.

In a shed made from wine bottles, Helen Martins recreated the nativity scene. One Wise Man kneels offering gifts whilst the others are still approaching in procession. The fact that Martins created the Nativity scene in the eastern end of the yard offended many local residents, who considered it to be against the teachings of the bible.

The glass Martins used was prepared using an old coffee grinder. The glass was collected by local children, for which she paid either pennies or homemade tameletjie - a sweet made from local quinces boiled with sugar. After crushing, the glass was washed, sorted according to color, and stored in preserve jars in the pantry.

The Long Bedroom, formally an enclosed porch, has three beds and a table with an unusual serpentine leg made from concrete. On the wall is a heart shaped mirror, a common feature of the house which is seemingly at odds with the disastrous marriage she had to Willem Johannes Pienaar. All mirrors in the house are positioned well above the diminutive Martins eye level - she not only avoided being seen by others, but worked hard to avoid seeing images of herself as well.

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