-Nacho Carbonell- “I always create objects with my hands, so that I can give them my personal touch. I like to see them as living organisms, imagine that they come alive with their sometimes surprising behavior. I want to transform them into communicative objects, which wake feeling and fantasy. In short, I want to make what allows you to escape the mundane.” The Quilt, with so many uses, was once literally vital in Andalusia. Trade routes wound through mountains. Winter and summer, it was necessary to protect goods as well as yourself and your horse from the elements during night transports. Still today these quilts are decorated with care and tradition. -Patricia Urquiola- famous for her inter-disciplinary work, she was born in Oviedo. I´s going well for her. She now works globally. “Personal experience is the key, crafts that I remember from my childhood, things that have followed me through the years.” | -Arturo Alvarez- makes unique, handmade, environmentally friendly lamps for private and public places – and with warm, light and sensual materials of his own design. In 20 years the company has grown to working in 50 different countries. In 2008, LAB Arturo Alvarez was created, a platform for developing lamp design with feeling, sensuality and environmental awareness. -Martin Azua- Who wouldn’t want to have a practically invisible house that inflates itself with the help of solar and body heat? Simple, but multifaceted, it protects against both cold and heat. Neat! Easy to take with you; it fits into your pocket. Great for a life on the go without excess baggage. -Jaime Hayon- Spain has long had an intense passion for the Baroque, which continues today. The new generation knows its history. Jaime Hayon, born in Madrid 1974, became know for his project, “Mediterranean Digital Baroque”. |
There’s really not a whole lot out there about Spanish Contemporary Design, but if we take a closer look, we find an exciting alternative to other countries well known for their design. Industrialization came late to Spain. There are still some parts of the country that are untouched by the industrial revolution. As opposed to Germany and Japan, Spain has never been an industrial wonder. Many Spanish designers don’t use high-tech tools. Instead, they offer inventiveness, humor and irony. They’re not known to be restrained either. Here there’s no fear of color in order to produce pleasurable, warm, “happy” objects. The less-known is alive and well. Below is a selection.
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My older brother once bought an oriental rug and put in his kitchen in Stockholm. I laughed and said that was a stupid idea. It’ll get so dirty. “Nope”, he said, “it won't. Because the wool is so dense and oily nothing can penetrate it. It’s perfect for the kitchen.” It did look great. Sometimes big brothers just know it all.
But the carpets from down here, from the warm climate of Northern Africa, are more lightweight and flat-woven. And, in general, not very dense or oily at all. I still want them in my kitchen. I want them in my hallways, my bedrooms, my studio, everywhere. I can’t even make myself roll them up and hide in a chest in the summer. This would of course be one thing in countries like Sweden, where the custom is to take your shoes off when you enter a house. But here no one never ever does - and here we have polvo, dust. Mucho polvo. And here vacuum cleaners are rare. What does one do? This:
PS. Types of (Moroccan) rugs: There are knotted, flat-woven, and pile carpets. There are rugs from Afghanistan, from China, from India, Iran, Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan, Caucasus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and more. The ones from around our strait, the ´Moroccan´ ones, often have geometric designs, and are colored with natural dyes; henna, indigo and saffron. In Morocco in general most major cities have a unique style or design, characteristic that distinguishes their carpets. The coastal capital, Rabat, is famous for carpets woven with floral and diamond-shaped elements, and a fairly bare field. Fes reached its golden age during the thirteenth century, when the city was home to over one hundred dye workers and thousands of artisan embroidery studios located in the city’s medina. From the High Atlas region comes kilims, characterized by lattice work, bands of thick pile, and reversibility - traditional and ancient designs, passed down from weaver to weaver. Many Berber carpets, are woven by the Beni Ourain peoples from the Rif Mountains near Taza. Their colors vary from neutral shades to popping hues, with designs ranging from ordered geometric shapes to a more free-form, expressive pattern. We skipped Easter this year, and took the ferry to Morocco instead. 40 minutes across the Mediterranean sea. Andalucía and Morocco may share much of their history, but Morocco is inundated with blue. The blue of the ocean and the sky have overflowed, the doors, the windows, the tiles, the boats… It is not just any blue – the shades of Moroccan blue are rich and warm, they pull towards turquoise, rather than red or violet. I buy a blue gandora and stride the streets of Safi, Marrakesh, Tangier, Essaouira with calm and with confidence. I dream about painting everything in sight in blue, blue, blue when I get back home to my house.
So what is this blue all about? I do some research and find it’s a bit puzzling. Stories interlace and contradict. Scholars write that at certain times in Moorish Spain, and other parts of the Islamic world, blue was the color for Christians and Jews, because only Muslims were allowed to wear white and green. In the Islamic world blue really was of secondary importance to green, but dark blue and turquoise decorative tiles were commonly used to decorate the facades and interiors of mosques and palaces, from Spain to Central Asia. I read that dark blue is the traditional color for good karma, positive energies and protection against the ‘Evil Eye’, and that this goes for light blue as well, with the difference light blue is also the color of the sky, so it symbolizes truth. Hence, the blue doors prevalent in a lot of places around the world, especially in the Mediterranean regions, are likely there because they are believed to repel evil. Some say it also serves as a mosquito repellant because “mosquitoes only like yellow”, and that light blue is used to mark Andalucíans homes. Blue are also the turbans worn by the men of the Tuareg people in North Africa, in protection against the sun and wind-blown sand of the Sahara desert. Instead of using dye, which uses precious water, the turbans are colored by pounding the fabric with powdered indigo. The blue color transfers to the skin, where it is seen as a sign of nobility and affluence. Early visitors called them the "Blue Men" of the Sahara. On the other hand, in the western hemisphere blue is associated with labor and the working class. It is the common color of overalls, blue jeans and other working costumes. Then again, someone with ‘blue blood’ can also be a member of the nobility. I find out the term comes from the Spanish sangre azul, and is said to refer to the pale skin and prominent blue veins of Spanish nobles. And, of course, blue is commonly used in Spain, as in several other cultures, to symbolize boys, in contrast to pink, which used for girls. It’s just that in the early 1900s, blue was the color for girls, since it had traditionally been the color of the Virgin Mary, while pink was for boys as it was akin to the color red considered a masculine color. I could go on. Ultramarine, cerulean, cobalt blue, Prussian blue… In ancient days blue thread was actually made from a dye extracted from a Mediterranean snail, hilazon, but the garment had to be exposed to the sun, the ultraviolet light, which transformed the more purple colorant to unadulterated blue. Most blue pigments were made from minerals though, especially lapis lazuli and azurite. It was crushed, grounded into powder and mixed with egg yolk and other binders - and made into striking rich blues of all shades and nuances. History can be gorgeous, subjected to the sun, the time, layer after layer, and eventually blended with contemporariness’. I acquire another blue gandora and stride the streets one more time, before taking the ferry back, across the blue Mediterranean Sea.. House, home, closeness and quality of life
I once heard a radio program where they interviewed a researcher about our need for nearness. She said that children, for example, don't need to necessarily have their own separate rooms. What they do need is closeness. She added that parents who work many extra hours to afford bigger houses, or bigger apartments, with separate rooms for everyone, could be a bit misguided. Especially if the effects are that they are away from home more hours, and more tired when they finally get there. “People, young and old”, she said, “are perfectly capable of finding ways to pull back when they need to. What you can't do on your own is be together with other people. The villages in Axarquia are small, but the old houses are built adjacent to each other and with very narrow alleys between. Bedrooms sometimes lack doors, and rarely hold just one bed. Front doors often stay ajar. Most of the year the windows are open too, day and night. I hear the neighbors sing for their kids and when spoons hit the edges of coffee cups. They hear us swear when our beans boil over. We live here together. We are safe here. On the north side of us nature opens up towards the valley, and to the next mountain. There you can walk for hours without meeting anybody. But the villages and the houses are built for community, and with the knowledge that we need each other much more than we need another bathroom. It bears thinking about. hv Moroccan tiles? Not these. But hydraulic cement tiles sometimes go by that, as many of their other names; encaustic cement tiles, mosaico hidraulicos, ladrilhos hidráulicos, carreaux de ciments, Spanish mission tiles, encaustic cement tiles, French cement tiles, Spanish cement tiles, hydraulic floor tiles, encaustic tiles, hidraulicos, Spanish mission tiles, mosaics de pasta, redondo tiles, rajoles hidràuliques, baldosas hidráulicas, pasta potosis, hidraulicos antiguos, ladrilhos de água, baldosas decoradas, baldosas hidráulicas, hidraulicos antiguos, hidráulicas de cemento… you name it. But they are not really Moroccan, maybe not even tiles. At least they are not kiln fired, or made from clay, but from cement, and cured by water and air only –just like ordinary cement. The top layer of the mixture is color tinted. So, instead of a thin coat of paint or print, the color is integral to the tile and goes approx 5mm deep. They appeared in the late 19th century in the south of France. Some say the first tiles were made near the country's first Portland cement plant. They spread fast to Latin America and in Europe. Around the turn of the 20th century they became very popular in the United States, and were considered high-end floor covering, used in thousands of landmark public buildings and palaces. Through the 1930s and 40s they were common in California and Florida. In the 60s they disappeared. But now they are making comeback, as a beautiful and high-quality alternative to modern industrial products.
Where do you use them? Indoors, outdoors, cafés, bedrooms, in public areas, in private bathrooms, abbsolutely anywhere. How? They can be installed on cement or wood subflooring. The thickness of the mortar depends on the eveness of the subfloor. Leave a very tight grout joint and use non-sanded grout. The visual effect should be more like a carpet. Clean with pH-neutral soap and water. Skip the sealing. It makes them slippery and they don’t age as beautiful. Where do I get them? They are still in production. Search the net. Try some of the names above. Sometimes you can also get a hold of old used ones. Scann places who sell used building mataerials. If they only have few of each you could be in luck, because the seller might not understand how beautiful a patchwork can be. (Victoria did, but she gave us a great price anyhow.) Amphorea, Garbology, Disposal, Reuse, Recycling, Olive oil
Archeology in Rome testifies to the size of the Andalucian olive oil industry for the empire. Monte Testaccio is a waste mound in Rome where almost exclusively Spanish oil amphorea were discarded during the first 250 yrs of the first milennium of the common era. The hill was constructed using mostly the fragments of large globular 70-litre (15 imp gal; 18 U.S. gal) vessels from Baetica (the Guadalquivir and costal region of Andalucía in modern Spain), of a type known as Dressel 20. It is not clear why Monte Testaccio was built using only olive oil vessels. The oil itself was probably decanted into bulk containers when the amphorae were unloaded at the port, in much the same way as other staples such as grain. There is no equivalent mound of broken grain or wine amphorae and the overwhelming majority of the amphorae found at Monte Testaccio are of one single type, which raises the question of why the Romans found it necessary to dispose of the amphorae in this way. One possibility is that the Dressel 20 amphora, the principal type found at Monte Testaccio, may have been unusually difficult to recycle. Many types of amphora could be re-used to carry the same type of product or modified to serve a different purpose—for instance, as drain pipes or flower pots. Fragmentary amphorae could be pounded into chips to use in opus signinum, a type of concrete widely used as a building material, or could simply be used as landfill. The Dressel 20 amphora, however, broke into large curved fragments that could not readily be reduced to small sherds. It is likely that the difficulty of reusing or repurposing the Dressel 20s meant that it was more economical to discard them. Monte Testaccio has provided archaeologists with a rare insight into the ancient Roman economy. The amphorae deposited in the mound were often labelled with tituli pictii, commercial inscriptions painted or stamped, which record information such as the weight of the oil contained in the vessel, the names of the people who weighed and documented the oil and the name of the district where the oil was originally bottled. This has allowed archaeologists to determine that the oil in the vessels was imported under state authority and was designated for the annona urbis (distribution to the people of Rome) or the annona militaris (distribution to the army). Indeed, some of the inscriptions found on mid-2nd century vessels at Monte Testaccio specifically record that the oil they once contained was delivered to the praefectus annonae, the official in charge of the state-run food distribution service. It is possible that Monte Testaccio was also managed by the praefectus annonae. The tituli picti on the Monte Testaccio amphorae tend to follow a standard pattern and indicate a rigorous system of inspection to control trade and deter fraud. An amphora was first weighed while empty, and its weight was marked on the outside of the vessel. The name of the export merchant was then noted, followed by a line giving the weight of the oil contained in the amphora (subtracting the previously determined weight of the vessel itself). Those responsible for carrying out and monitoring the weighing then signed their names on the amphora and the location of the farm from which the oil originated was also noted. A stamp on the vessel’s handle often identified the maker of the amphora. The inscriptions also provide evidence of the structure of the oil export business. Apart from single names, many inscriptions list combinations such as "the two Aurelii Heraclae, father and son", "the Fadii", "Cutius Celsianus and Fabius Galaticus", "the two Junii, Melissus and Melissa", "the partners Hyacinthus, Isidore and Pollio", "L. Marius Phoebus and the Vibii, Viator and Retitutus." This suggests that many of those involved were members of joint enterprises, perhaps small workshops involving business partners, father-son teams and skilled freedmen. Later Monte Testaccio’s economic significance was somewhat greater, as the hill's interior was discovered to have unusual cooling properties which investigators attributed to the ventilation produced by its porous structure. This made it ideal for wine storage and caves were excavated to keep wine cool in the heat of the Roman summer. Oil lamps were used by Phoenicians and Greeks who handed down their use to the Romans around the 4th century b.C. The more ancient did not have covers , and had a small flat case and a wick spout on the rim. Think of Cordova: The streets well-paved, with raised sidewalks for pedestrians. During the night, ten miles of strtees well illuminated by lamps. (This was hundreds of years before there was a paved street in Paris or a street lamp in London.) Cordova had a population of at least one million during the period of the caliphate, and it being served by four thousand public markets and five thousand mills. Public baths numbered in the hundreds. The amenity was present at a time when cleanliness in Christian Europe was regarded as a sin. Education was universal in Moorish Spain, available to the most humble, while in Christian Europe ninety-nine percent of the population were illiterate, and even kings could neither read nor write. So these lamps (this one being bought brand new locally) have been around here for longer than one can trace. One use oil; discarded cooking oil, olive oil from last year, leftovers...in old times it could be animal fat. At special occasions it could be perfumed oil, and it works beautifully. Well, we figured it was more fun to finish the new WC first...Bathroom ceiling comes later. Low budget, recycled and home made material. The sink was easy once R found the right material at a Fereteria in Velez-Malaga. They had a box of old dusty faucets. Paco helped out with a pipe, and I made some tiles. Magic to suddenly have hot and cold wtaer coming out of the wall!
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