 The Gallery had been intended to bring non-African art to Harare but when McEwen created the Workshop School to encourage new work in painting and sculpture, the local community of artists re-discovered latent talents for stone sculpture and a “first generation” of new Shona sculptors was born.These included Joram Mariga and his nephew John Takawira, and Thomas Mukarobgwa who joined the gallery staff in 1957.This budding art movement was relatively slow to develop but was given massive impetus in 1966 by Tom Blomefield, a white South-African-born farmer of tobacco whose farm at Tengenenge near Guruve had extensive deposits of serpentine stone suitable for carving.