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oficio y criterio. 10 Spanish Creators

Discover the vision and creative approach of 10 Spanish companies

Interviews by Anja Aronowsky Cronberg and Kati Krause Photography by Nacho Alegre

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Arturo Alvarez I have often wondered why the spaces that need good lighting the most, as a general rule, are the very spaces that are lit the worst; hospitals, police stations, schools, community centers. I can tell that Arturo Alvarez has asked himself the same question. When he started out making his first lamps in the 90s, it was with a clear vision of making the world around him a little more inviting and hospitable by offering thoughtful design, artisanal values and a quality of light. I can’t help but think that for someone who grew up as a punk, shocking his conservative community with an earring and long hair, this thoughtful and almost Zen approach to life is a rather beautiful quirk of fate. Arturo tells us that harmony and balance have always been values that he has held in the highest esteem when designing, and together with respect they are the trio of assets that he today considers to be the most important in life.Â

balance & harmony www.arturo-alvarez.com

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Arturo and his wife Patricia have their home, office and workshop in the same building in the Galician countryside, overlooking their garden.

I’ve never seen a house with so many lamps! All the prototypes pass through here at some point, I like to see for myself what it feels like to live with them. I often have friends who come and visit and go, ‘Oh what have you done with the lamp that used to be in the corner? It was my favorite!’ But I like to keep changing them.

I love those funny faces you have on the wall.

Where are they from? Oh those are little things I made out of clay with the children. We experiment and play together a lot, and often the materials we use later end up in my work. I like to work with everyday materials, transforming them into something new.

What was it like growing up in your family? My parents got married really young –they were seventeen and eighteen– and they emigrated to England when I was only six months old, so I grew up with my grandparents. My family was very humble, they moved to Vedra, A Coruña from central Galicia, which was even poorer then, to find better work. My grandparents had nine children, their youngest were twins and only two years older than me. So we had to make do with what we had and be inventive. My grandfather was a farm labourer and a real perfectionist. He made everything that we needed in the house, from the table to our clogs. He could make absolutely everything. He even cut our hair!

How did you first become interested in design?

I was always the odd one in our family. I was ar-

tistic and creative in an environment where there was basically no time for art. I grew up in the 70s and I loved music so I became a punk.

I remember going to London as a teenager and seeing for the first time a guy with an earring.

It was a revelation! This was in ’76 or ’77, and as soon as I came home I pierced my ear, too. I had long hair then and people in the village looked at me as if I was a freak. You can imagine how I stuck out in the village where I lived! But I had friends who came from Madrid with their families to spend the summer holidays here, and they would always come with information from the big city. It was through them that I was introduced to art, music and design. I hated studying and I left school when I was sixteen but my grandmother was adamant that if I didn’t continue my education I had to find a job.

What was your first job? Funnily enough it had everything to do with lamps – I became an electrician. Later I worked as a carpenter and one day I found some glass and started experimenting with it. In the end I actually came to lamps from glass. I loved the stained glass I had found but making windows from it seemed both cumbersome and limiting. A little lamp is so much more convenient, everyone can find a place in their home for a lamp. Eventually I took some of the lamps I’d made to a store in Santiago and it wasn’t long before the tourists had bought them all.

What did they look like, those first lamps? They were a very rudimentary version of the Tiffany

Arturo Alvarez

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lamp. I used the same technique of stained glass and soldering, but I simplified the shapes and colours. This was in the mid 90s and it must have struck a chord with the fashion of the time because people really took to them.

In almost everything that’s been written about you it’s mentioned that your lamps are all handmade. Why is that so important? It’s important to us because it’s the only way we can compete in the market today. Industrially we’re no match for the big lighting companies.

We’re the only ones who make lamps in Galicia and one of the few companies who make their lamps entirely by hand, numbered and labelled.

Here in Galicia we’re so backwards when it comes to industry, there’s just no way I could try and compete with what comes out of Valencia or Barcelona. Here, if I ask a company to produce 20 pieces of something I need I can still get it, but if I ask for 400 I’m screwed!

We had to fly and then drive for quite some time to get here – I can’t help but feel that this is a little like the end of the world. What’s it like to run a design company from here? It’s true that we’re rather isolated here. Even the internet is painfully slow. I still remember a consultant I hired in our early days who told me, ‘The only advice I have for you is, if you’re going to work in design move away from here!’ And it’s true that sometimes it drives me mad to have to struggle so much to make things happen that other companies would take for granted.

Everything takes a lot longer. But I just can’t imagine living or working anywhere else, I love

nature too much. I have always lived here and despite it all I love it. Every day at three-thirty I finish working for the day and then I’m free to do whatever I feel like. I love gardening, I love animals. I like to live in a relaxed way.

Truth be told, I would rather have the problems we have here, than those that come from living in a big city.

Can good lighting make life better? Absolutely.

I can’t for the life of me understand why more people haven’t understood that. Design is important of course, but ultimately it’s the quality of the light that makes the difference. Good, warm lighting shows that you respect yourself and those around you. In life I think it’s so important to be respectful, this is something that I remind my children of every day.

I want them to know that in life, as long as you give respect, you will get respect back. Sometimes I can’t help but wonder why we choose to make life so difficult for ourselves, us humans. We are the only ones who fight the way we do. Sometimes I think that if someone was watching us from up above, they would think we were all crazy. What are we all fighting for?

Before we know it we’ll all die by virtue of being successful! The only way forward is with respect. This is just as important for me in my business as it is in my family life. I always treat my employees with the utmost respect.

When you do, you produce more, the environment is better, everyone feels good about going to work in the morning. I know that I will only get something if I am prepared to give something first.

Arturo Alvarez

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Alex Alorda If you come unprepared, the first visit to the KETTAL offices in Barcelona can be a startling experience. As you wait by the reception desk, you’ll notice a few artworks that look a little more expensive than the prints that usually adorn large offices. Just visible at the far end of the room is a two-by-two-metre Bjarne Melgaard painting.

And in a bright space at the southern edge of the office floor, there is a miniature museum of contemporary art, with pieces by the likes of Takashi Murakami, Anselm Kiefer and Anish Kapoor overlooking the busy street below.

The art foundation is the brainchild and passion of Manuel Alorda, who founded the outdoor furniture company KETTAL in the mid-60s. His son Alex, the company’s Vice President, admires and shares his values, but rather than visual artists he, together with design manager Antonio Navarro, selects designers to collaborate with.

This partnership gave the world the first Hella Jongerius garden chair.

future classics www.kettal.com

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Pictured left are handmade models by Patricia Urquiola (top left), sketches by Emiliana Design Studio for the Zigzag collection (top right) and Hella Jongerius’ dummy of the Bob chair (bottom).

Design director Antonio Navarro wants the designers to feel they’re producing an artwork.

Your family owns a rather impressive art collection. What’s the idea behind it? Alex: Our criterion has always been quality. I don’t like buying a lot. I prefer buying little but very high quality work. Every artist has their moment, a period when their work was particularly good. Our collection is made up of the works from those periods.

Who selects the works? AA: Mainly my father.

He is the real collector. He’s an autodidact; everything he’s done, he’s taught himself. And he knows a lot about art. His office is full of art books, he’s got his head in it all day. He is passed through all aspects of collecting. Right now he’s collecting African art, which is a collector’s stage of maturity. He also has his collection of silverware, of picture frames, a contemporary and a vanguard collection. He only buys the best for every collection: the pieces that can last, that may not be understood today, but those that will be future classics. It’s important to have that vision, the judgement necessary to decipher which one it’ll be. And that judgement is what we have been applying to KETTAL over the past five or six years, with designers we’ve approached.

What designers do you look for? AA: Our list is very short. They’re who we consider people with the potential to be future classics, or people who have changed design. For me, our Maia chair by Patricia Urquiola was a turning point in outdoor furniture design. And the Bob chair [by Hella

KETTAL

Jongerius] could be too, although people may not have understood it completely yet.

So when choosing designers, the important thing is a marked style. AA: Yes, it’s very personal. Very much like an art collection. We like to work with people whose work we admire.

We’re going to make a special edition of the Bob chair, and I’m going to get one for my house.

Antonio, too. We like what we do. Someone else might not like it at all, but the important thing is that we like it, that it complies with our values and that it’s coherent.

Antonio: It’s very important to have an opinion, and to know what we want. The way we do things is: pick things we like, objects that could be classics, and value the designer’s background, their oeuvre. Their life experience is reflected in their work.

Explain a little bit about the creative process.

AA: First, we have to get to know the designer.

What kind of person are they? Do they share our state of mind?

And how do you go about that? AA: The designers we talk to these days are people who are very well established. So in a sense it’s the other way round, we come to them, introduce ourselves, and they listen. We talk, but we don’t talk about the project or products, we talk about them. How are you? Who are you? What do you want to do? We tell them about the foundation, the family... we don’t even talk about the brief.

KETTAL

14 We only get to know each other, like a young couple.

Well, in a sense it’s a marriage you’re getting into. AA: Since we work with very few designers, yes, we get married to them. It’s important to get to know the person. First in their country, then in ours. Then we start talking about images, things we like, pictures that transmit our values. Then we get to the third stage, which is the product brief. And we leave that very open.

AN: It’s important that the designers feel they’re going to produce an artwork and we’re providing the resources to do so.

So you treat them as artists. AN: Yes, a little bit.

Of course, we’re always behind them.

AA: They come with their artwork and they don’t have to worry about manufacturing it – that’s our problem. I remember once we were here, on the terrace with Hella, building a prototype that had nothing to do with the final product and we didn’t even know if we’d be able to manufacture it. But we kept telling her, ‘Yes, yes, just keep on going.’

AN: You can’t set limits for yourself. Limits come by themselves. The good thing about these projects is that they force us to be ingenious.

The company starts working in a different way: we look to solve problems. That causes a change in mentality from the top all the way to the factory floor.

How do you work with the designers? AA: It’s usually Antonio who leads the conversation, and that’s good because he’s very reflexive and I’m more visceral. He gives the necessary information to the designer in the right moment, and often he tells me to wait, ‘Wait for things to fall by themselves.’ And they do! It’s not always easy, we’ve had a lot of arguments... healthy ones, but arguments nonetheless. What we’ve got clear is that although we work with a lot of designers, we define the brand.

AN: Everything depends on the designer’s personality.

AA: Urquiola is a volcano. She heats up and suddenly pulls out her textiles and scissors and turns over the table and chair.

AN: When we have a meeting or a presentation with her we prepare everything and take a picture before, and one after. Afterwards everything is all over the place.

AA: And now we’re prepared. In the beginning we suffered. Now we know much better how to interact with the designer on the same level.

We know how they work and that, at the end

of the day, they’re normal people. They need your feedback. Being an opinion leader –which is what designers who set trends are– comes with a lot of insecurities. That’s normal, it happens to anyone who’s steering the ship. You’re insecure. They have a decision to make and five people waiting for it. I mean, they could say, ‘Left!’ and be wrong, but we don’t want them to be wrong. We want them to make a good product.

Do you feel comfortable with the word curator?

AA: No, I don’t feel like a curator. I think what we do is respect the work of the designer, who is the artist. In the end we also have to make sure that the final product is what we’re looking for. Luckily today we know very well what that is. But me, a curator? No. We’re problem-solvers.

I imagine that if Hella had gone to another company with the Bob chair, they wouldn’t have understood it. Why did you? AN: First of all, we have a lot of confidence in Hella’s judgement and work. But also, from the first prototype she brought, we evolved the design together. If it’s hard to understand now, but the first sketches were a lot harder. It was really, really... strange.

AA: It was very arty. It was meant for a museum.

AN: I loved it, but at the end of the day we’re running a business, so we had to reach a certain balance. In the beginning it was simply a piece of art. So we started working on that and she was delighted. But it was also very important that we believed in her judgement and work. There’s a point where you simply trust the designer you work with.

Do you think Bob will succeed? AN: I think it’s innovative. I don’t want to be pretentious, but I think it’s going to be a classic. At least that’s our intention. Not a great mass of people are going to understand it, but a certain group will, and from there we hope it will filter through to the rest.

AA: In the end, it’s like everything else: why do you have this painting in your home, or that car, or why do you dress the way you do? What’s around us defines us. If you enter a house and see certain pieces, for example something from a flea market that’s been restored, it tells you that that person has a certain sensibility. It’s the same with Bob: it’s a product that defines people.

Let’s hope you didn’t get it wrong! AA: That wouldn’t matter, because we will have learned a lot along the way. That knowledge and experience stays, and that gives you more strength to create different things in the future.

KETTAL

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Juan & Antonia When you walk into Teixidors’ workshop in Terrassa, the sight that greets you is pretty impressive. The meditative and rhythmic tok-tok-tok of the looms is the most prominent sound and when you walk around to take a closer look at the action, you can’t help but be struck by the beautiful and delicate textiles that are being born from it. Teixidors was founded in 1983 by Marta Ribas and Juan Ruiz, in order to give economic independence and social integration to the mentally incapacitated. Today, each and every one of their workers are fully trained artisans. No, this is no ordinary business. Founded as a co-operative many of the very first workers remain, joined now by others who heard about the initiative through the grapevine and came to knock on Texidors’ unassuming door. Marta has since left to start up another venture, based on the same values, but together with new addition Antonia Bové, her husband is still looking after the looms and the people that use them.

a tender touch www.teixidors.com

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How did you start? Juan: My wife, Marta, was a social worker and she worked for many years in a psychiatric hospital not far from here. It was during her time there that she first got the idea of finding a way to create jobs for people with learning difficulties, something that could act as therapy as well as a way to help them feel useful. She spent a long time thinking about what type of work this might be, and after plenty of research she settled on the idea of textile work. She experimented with different activities for a while but it didn’t take her that long to realise that weaving was the technique that most fulfilled the needs of the people she wanted to help.

Were you involved at this point? J: This was in 1976 and at that time I was an engineer. My role was really just to listen and give her as much support as I could. We had always wanted to work together but someone had to put food on the table so while Marta spent those first years learning the craft and fine-tuning her vision, so I kept my job. With time her project grew and became clearer and clearer, and in 1978 we both felt that the time had come for me to leave my job and for us to set this project up properly. Together.

How did you find the first workers? J: We made an early attempt to set up a workshop in Cabra but it didn’t work out. In the early 80s we set up Teixidors here in Terrassa and it didn’t take long until we literally had people knocking on our door asking for work.

Terrassa has a long history of textile work so it made sense to be here. There was a technical college in the city that helped us get started.

In those days it was even harder than today for someone with learning difficulties to find work so we received a grant in order to get started. We set it up as a co-operative together with six workers – in fact, four of them are still with us.

What’s the common denominator between the people who work here? J: Well, the basis of our selection process is that every worker here is mentally incapacitated. That’s the minimum requirement. In general the people who knock on our door today are recommended to come here by their social worker. The other thing that is fundamental for us is that they are able to learn, to register and take in new knowledge.

And after someone knocks on your door, then what happens? J: Then the worker goes through the same screening process that any worker in any other company would go through. They come with their certificate that states their disability and then together with their social worker we evaluate their social situation. I always prefer to hire someone from an unfavourable social situation, someone with an unstable family situation for example, who therefore needs the structure that we can provide here. In fact, I never look for the most able worker, I look for the one who needs the work the most.

Teixidors

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The looms used at Teixidors are based on photographs of old looms from Germany and were constructed by hand by a local carpenter.

Do you then hire the worker straight away?

J: No, not straight away. Once it has been established that a worker fulfills our basic requirements we take them on for a trial period of one to two weeks. During that time we teach and observe them in our environment and make a decision based on both their abilities and their disabilities. Once we decide to take someone on we begin to train them in the craft of weaving. That is a process that takes about four years. That’s when they become proper artisans.

Who designed the textiles in those early days?

J: Marta did. Even in the beginning she was adamant that we only use first-rate materials, like wool, silk, linen or cashmere. Marta was always creative, an aesthete in fact, even if her primary concern when starting Teixidors was social.

How would you say that Teixidors has changed since it first started? Antonia: About five years ago we noticed that the influence of the global market was having a serious effect on our sales.

We were competing more and more with international companies who, because of low labour costs, were able to produce textiles a lot cheaper that we were. So about four years ago we decided to change the image and style of the company. The product was feeling a little tired and we wanted to update ourselves and find a way to reach a more international market. We didn’t want to be perceived as mere artisans anymore, so we had to become fashionable.

How did this change in attitude manifest itself in your work? A: Well, instead of changing the design intuitively as and when we felt like it, like Marta did in the beginning, we decided to update it more regularly. We also decided to actively search out the clients we wanted. We came to the conclusion that the client we had to find and target was one who doesn’t consume on the basis of price alone, but rather of design, innovation, exclusivity and quality.

What do you love the most about your work?

A: I love the complexity of this project. At Teixidors the most important aspect of the business is the people, when in any other place it would be the productivity. We never fire a worker who has become less productive – we are a co-operative, after all, and the idea is that we help each other make this business run. Even so, we’re not a charity. So when our products enter the market they have to do so with the same standards as the products of our competitors. So although the main objective of Teixidors isn’t to make a profit, we still have to be a sustainable enterprise. This is the challenge and this is what I love.

J: It’s curious but for me what was once the main driving force and ideal, the fact that we’re doing something very concrete to help integrate disabled people into society, has become less and less important with time. Today it’s just a part of my job. What has become more significant is just the fact that the work I do on an everyday basis still challenges and inspires me.

I know I still have so much more to learn.

Teixidors

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Juan Carlos Olano The offices and factory of Enea are located near San Sebastián, against a backdrop of lush hills full of sheep and trees. A river flows just thirty metres from the main building. The offices, though, look pretty much like any other, because Enea isn’t trying to be a star.

Their mission is simple: to shape metal tubes into good chairs for the international contract market. And they’re succeeding in part due to their pragmatic approach to business, embodied by company director Juan Carlos Olano, and also because their structure allows them to adapt to market fluctuations like few others. Enea is a co-operative. The staff are employees and stakeholders at the same time. Here, in the Basque countryside, lies a perfect example of the healthy kind of capitalism that we so urgently need right now.

common sense www.eneacontract.com

Enea

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Many of the workers on the factory floor are women, and nearly all of them are company stakeholders as well as employees.

As Juan Carlos Olano ploughs through this interview, calmly finishing every point before addressing the next one, an expression he uses frequently is ‘common sense’. Another is ‘marriage’. The marriage of design and engineering. The marriage between the company and the designer. Between the company and its workers. He has soberly analysed what makes marriages work –mainly, communication– and lives by it. It’s all common sense.

Having been director of Enea for twenty-six years, Juan Carlos himself is somehow married to this company. Especially because he, as about 80 percent of Enea’s employees, from management to the factory floor, are also the company’s stakeholders. Enea is a co-operative, and as such, it sounds like a nostalgic communist ideal in this dog-eat-dog world of rampant capitalism.

Yet make no mistake: profit is at the top of Juan Carlos’ priorities. And the key to profit, in the world of healthy capitalism, is product.

Enea was born in 1984 as a branch of Eredu, a factory specialising in garden and camping furniture made from metal tubes. Initially the company manufactured a wide variety of furniture, but after the success of their BCN chair, designed by Josep Lluscà, they decided to focus on seating for the contract market. Chairs made from metal tubes, all manufactured inhouse, no nonsense, good quality – that’s what Enea does. The Basque, it seems, are not that different from the Germans.

‘We understood that, in order to achieve our goal of becoming leaders in the contract seating business in Spain, we had to focus on export,’ Juan Carlos says, in his calm, staid voice.

‘Exports means quality. You have to observe and listen and make sure that your chair offers something different.

The basic concepts are: listen to the market, talk to the distributors and study the parameters of success. Our future lies in R&D, engineering, design and a company structure geared towards service.’ All makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

But then Juan Carlos adds something else. ‘Of course, you need the financial capacity to do all this. Many companies haven’t got that right now. We do. And why? Because we’re a co-operative.’

Eredu, and thus Enea as well, form part of the Mondragón corporation, a Basque association of over 250

Enea

Enea

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companies and co-operatives employing over 80,000 people. Founded in 1956 by the priest José María Arizmendiarrieta, the corporation’s philosophy is built around the following core values: co-operation, participation, social responsibility and innovation.

The member companies include insurance companies, a bank, schools, research facilities and distributors (the supermarket chain Eroski is a member).

When necessary, capital is raised by the stakeholders, and when successful, part of the profit is shared out among them. Benefits are tied to salary levels, as are losses. But every co-operative member has one vote, and management (though not all decisions) has to be approved by members. ‘We’re all in the same boat,’ Juan Carlos explains. ‘If the boat does well we all do well, and if it doesn’t we all suffer. That gives the company another dimension. It makes it more sensitive, closer to reality. We all live the reality of the market. I have a meeting every month with one part of the company to explain its evolution. And every two months I have an informative talk with all workers in which I explain things.’

This means that factory workers are interested in, and informed about, much broader aspects of the company than their immediate responsibilities. It also means that management has to be diplomatic when making decisions that affect staff. But most importantly, as Juan Carlos says, it means that Enea is very flexible. ‘When ten hours have to be worked, ten-hour shifts are worked. And when there’s little work, we work seven-hour shifts. So the co-operative is a very good organisation for current times. Because right now we need to be flexible.’

This, of course, also means that co-operative members don’t have to be laid off in times of crisis; in fact, they can only be fired when committing a grave infraction as stipulated in the co-operative’s rule book.

Another important difference at Enea, and co-operatives in general, is that profits don’t leave the company; they’re reinvested. ‘We have made a lot of money over the past twenty-five years. As a shareholder you’d take that out. In a co-operative that money is reinvested. And that’s why we are very strong right now.’ And he adds: ‘It’s a very nice and motivating relationship because you feel like you generate wealth. And then you should try to share that wealth in the fairest way possible.’

You might imagine the choking laugh of a hedge fund manager right now, but Enea is far from a cuddly communist ideal. Juan Carlos is adamant that business comes first; organisational structure comes second. ‘You have to be a business. Make products, sell them, earn money. A business isn’t an NGO. The only raison d’être of a business is to make profits.

Without profits there’s nothing. And how do we make our products a success? As I said, it’s a combination of engineering and design, with an organisational structure focused on service. This is no mystery! It’s a question of doing things with common sense.’

Enea

Enea

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Nina Masó If you had told Nina Masó ten years ago that she’d one day work in the countryside school where she used to attend mass as a child, she probably would have declared you insane. But the story of design company, publishing house and, most recently, tree nursery Santa & Cole is full of examples of how life takes unexpected turns, and how necessity creates opportunity. Javier Nieto, Gabriel Ordeig and Nina Masó founded the company in the self-destructive, design-conscious and boiling Barcelona of the 80s, re-releasing designer lamps. Research into designers led to a book publishing endeavour, the ’92 Olympic Games brought an urban outdoor division, and the opportunity to buy an abandoned school in the Catalonian countryside led to a foray into growing trees.

Twenty-five years after founding the company, Javier and Nina keep on. No-one knows what they’ll be up to next, but it’s certain they’ll be going it together.

wholeheartedly www.santacole.com

30 When was this school closed?

I think it closed in ’91, but it’s from the 60s or 70s.

That’s how you started out, by renovating his flat? Yes. We had huge fights but we stuck together.

It looks very 70s. Oh yes, very.

The architect isn’t well known at all. He was a Franco-supporting nationalist, which is strange, because you can’t find anything about him. Manuel Baldrich. But this building is spectacular. It was a very, very modern school. We’re next to the village of Cardedeu, where I spent nearly all my childhood summers. I’ve known this school since my childhood.

I find that bourgeois yet arty scene from Barcelona in the ‘80s hugely fascinating. Who formed part of it? Was Mariscal in your group? No, Mariscal was fighting his own war, but he was part of the whole Catalan movement. In the 80s we went out a lot, and were very influenced by our 60s predecessors of the Bocaccio club and The 1987 poster for the Colilla the Gauche Divine movement. lamp, with illustrations by Montesol.

Our design and aesthetics were Do you live around here? No, determined by designer bars.

A new one opened and we’d all go there to have I live in Barcelona. But my family has a close rea look. You know, I see kids these days and think, lationship with this village. Also, Santa –you know, Santa & Cole stands for Javier Nieto San‘Wow, you all look so fresh!’ In our time it was really heavy. To the extent that half our group ta and Gabriel Ordeig Cole– formed part of my group when we were eleven years old. isn’t here anymore. Including my husband. It was rough. We just didn’t know the risks. People took anything thinking that it was alright. It was a Is he from here? No, he also came to spend the summer. But that’s where I know him from. And different world. that’s why Javier married my younger sister.

When you started out as a company, what prodGabriel was my boyfriend then. When I introduced Gabriel to Javier, they fell in love, inteluct did you start with? When I met Gabriel we fell in love in a very curious way, because he was lectually speaking. And that’s when the whole a weird guy. He made custom lamps. He collabomess started. rated in a few Bigas Luna films doing the set deWhy isn’t your name in the company name? Besign, together with Carles Riart. Carles had made this lamp called Colilla and he asked Gabriel cause it didn’t sound good. Also, they were two to take over its production. That’s how we made men and that was normal. I was Gabriel’s romantic and professional partner. Javier came from ends meet – with Colilla and the odd interior design job. Then we met Javier, and he said, ‘Why the world of economics; Gabriel was a designer don’t we start a company?’ Our immediate referand artist. When we thought about a company ence was BD [BD Ediciones de Diseño Barcelona]. name we realised that Santa & Cole sounded very good, but they’re their mothers’ surnames.

We wanted to be curators like they were. The difference between curators and manufacturMy mother’s surname is horrible. It’s Augusers is, as a curator you select without any limitatina. I’ve been here from the first day, but my tion because you can get someone else to manuname hasn’t. Gabriel died in 1994. But his spirit remains very much alive in Santa & Cole. facture it. Our second product was a very cute lamp called Prima. We had to stop making it because you could electrocute yourself. We sold so So Javier is a businessman... Yes, Javier is the businessman, while Gabriel was the mad creamany of those though! In our first catalogue, we made crude jokes about the postmodern Memphis tive genius. design of the 80s, because it was something we were against. Ours was a reaction to what was And you? I did a little bit of everything. Now I’m the one who tries to save the Cole spirit. I mean, happening in Italian design at that moment. when we started this business Javier had no And your close relationship with the Milá famclue of design. I edited a book about Gabriel and Javier wrote a letter in which he explained how ily, where does that come from? We approached Miguel Milá for his TMM lamp, and he was more we renovated his home and that’s how he discovered the world of design. than happy to give it to us.

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Some of the former classrooms at the school that’s now Santa & Cole’s offices harbour a seemingly random collection of classic pieces, prototypes and parts that are being used for experiments of all sorts.

33 Was Miguel well-known are very few. He has a then? Oh yes, he was. The very fresh and young apfirst well-known designers proach. Let’s see how long in Spain were Miguel it lasts, because this comand André Ricard, who pany wears you down started working in the 50s. quickly! It’s important for Well, before Miguel there us not to lose touch with was Antonio de Moragas. youth. The people who He was a wonderful grew up in the 80s, more person. First we recovered than those of the 60s, we continue to be quite the TMM, and then young, intellectually Moragas. That’s when we started making books speaking.

Nina, Javier and Gabriel at their showroom about dead architects in Barcelona in 1987.

How did you come up who’d left a little-known design legacy. One of with the tree nursery?

Javier is a character with a lot of very strong them was based on Moragas. We recovered one ideas. He’s restless. He never finishes a single of his lamps and a sofa he designed in ’57. And whenever someone bought the lamp or the sofa, thing because while he’s doing that thing, he is already thinking of the next. That’s good, bewe gave them the book. cause that’s why we’re here. I mean, when he How did the catalogue grow? With lamps that said he wanted to buy this school, we told him he was nuts. But he insisted. So we bought this already existed, a little updated. That’s how we could grow so fast. This re-releasing thing, we place, and it’s a huge lot. There used to be peach and apple orchards. That’s when Javier had were really passionate about that. And I want the idea to open a nursery and sell trees. If you to continue to re-release pieces because I like it.

That bookshelf over there, I want to make that. sell a street lamp, why can’t you sell street trees? Lamps, trees... it’s the same thing. Also, Javier the other day brought an image from for me it’s important that people start seeing that TV series, the one where they smoke a lot...

Santa & Cole as a contemporary business, not a business from twenty-five years ago. I find Mad Men? That one. There’s a bookshelf just that a bit annoying. I’m sick of history. I know like this one. And it’s from here, from the that people like our history, but I want to keep school! It was in all the classrooms. I don’t like modern bookshelves. I think it’s important on living! to dig out designs that haven’t been appreciDo you still go out? Oh yes, to the extent that ated properly. I’m a trained interior designer, so I think my vision is a little broader. I alI can. I’ve got quite a hippie spirit. Oriol Regàs just died. He was a totem of the Gauche Divine ways try to see the product in its surroundmovement, and the other day I read a text that ings, and I have the impression that I’m a little said, ‘What was the Gauche Divine of Barcelona more critical or objective. I find it very important that everything is in harmony. If you look in the 60s? It was a bunch of people with a leftist mentality but who lived like conservatives.’ at our catalogue, all products –with a few exBourgeois! I’m bourgeois, too. I come from a ceptions, because we’ve made mistakes– go bourgeois family, traditional Catalan, brought well together. I think that’s the value of Santa & Cole, that judgement and the fact that eveup in Barcelona. My mother is nouveaux riche and my father an arch-conservative. I’m a rything is linked. We don’t go along with fashbourgeois Catalan and I’ve had my hippie periion, our focus is atemporal. I couldn’t care less about fashion. od, my hip period and my posh period.

Do Javier and you usually make those decisions together? We have a directors committee, which is quite big. But the truth is, even though everybody has a valid opinion, the people who are really part of the whole re-releasing thing are David, our production manager, and I. David has very sound judgement, and to find a person of sound judgement isn’t easy at all. There

Santa & Cole

And which one did you stick with? The hippie period. Clearly. I’m very austere, I like living with just the basic necessities. I like having my room next to the garden so I can pee outside.

The less I have to use the toilet, the better.

Here you’ve got a garden right outside. Oh yes, here I do it, too.

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–4– Arturo Alvarez

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–10– Alex Alorda

–16– Juan Ruiz & Antonia Bové

–22– Juan Carlos Olano

–42– Esther Castaño

–48– Mercedes Laso Galbis & Alberto Ales

–28– Nina Masó contents

–36– Sandro Tothill & Mariví Calvo

–54– Nani Marquina

–60– Javier Marset contents

36

Sandro & Mariví The lamps that bear the discreet Lzf sticker are a pretty good reflection of the couple that make them. Sandro Tothill is as jovial and garrulous as Australians are supposed to be and his partner Mariví Calvo is just as full of beans, albeit with a sling of fiery Spanish passion thrown in for good measure. They love each other, and together they have come to love lamps.

The lamps they’ve been making since they met in the early 90s are ingenious and playful and as mischievous as the devil’s horns that have become their signature.

The afternoon we spent with Sandro and Mariví in the countryside on the outskirts of Valencia was, to put it simply, great. When we finally and reluctantly left, it was with smiles on our faces and bellies full of paella and wine, a little wiser and tipsier than when we arrived, and very much more inspired.

the light of love www.lzf-lamps.com

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39 This space is amazing! How did you find it? Sandro: Well, when we first started out we were sharing a space with Mariví’s dad in the centre of Valencia. He’s a delicatessen owner so there we were crammed in amongst all the hams. It was quite crowded to say the least. After years of working like this we eventually had to face up to the fact that we had to find a space of our own.

Mariví: I knew that there was no way I could stand being housed in an industrial plant, it had to be something that struck a chord with us. So we began asking around amongst friends, and it didn’t take that long before a painter friend who comes from the village here told us about this place. It’s an old factory that his uncle owned, but it had been abandoned since the 60s. We just fell in love. That was about three years ago now and ever since we’ve been doing it up. We started with the bare minimum, making it livable, and in fact for the first year we did live here. After a while we found a house not far from here.

S: We have a huge garden now. It’s amazing! I can finally pee in the garden again – I haven’t been able to do that since I was a kid! There’s something very primal about that, marking your territory.

The lamp on the right is one of the first produced by Lzf and is adorned with drawings by Perico Pastor, a friend from Mariví’s days in New York.

Lzf Lamps

How did you meet? M: When we met, Sandro was a musician and I was a painter. I had just moved from New York to Paris but I never really felt at home there. I started coming back to Valencia more often to see my friends and family, and on one of those trips I met Sandro.

S: I had come to Valencia a few years before because I was escaping Brisbane, where I was born.

I was playing bass in a band but the band had just split up and I was gagging to leave Australia. After a few years in England I was offered a job teaching English to Spanish students here in Valencia. So I came and didn’t realize till I was already here that my visa was running out, and because I wasn’t on a contract I couldn’t renew it. I became an illegal immigrant in effect, stuck in Valencia. I was very much alone and quite depressed for some time. I begged the guitar player from my old band to come to Spain, and he did.

In the 90s Spain was still quite free and, coming from the conservative nightmare that is Brisbane, we were amazed to discover that people were totally relaxed about smoking joints in the street. Gradually we began discovering the more bohemian side of Valencia and the people we were meeting introduced us to a whole new side of the city. It was at a party with this crowd that I first saw Mariví. I remember being completely mesmerised by her. She was wearing a very tight, red striped T-shirt with an Edelweiss on it and a pair of baggy Chinese worker pants with

braces and her hair was pulled up into two buns. A few days later we met again by chance at a dinner and this time I was more courageous and approached her, and we ended up talking till six in the morning.

M: I had to leave the next morning at eight to go home to Paris and I still hadn’t packed my luggage. I was so tired that when I finally got home I just couldn’t face folding up clothes, so instead I fell asleep curled up in my suitcase.

In the morning my mum found me and couldn’t believe her eyes.

S: After that, three months passed and I didn’t hear from her but when she came again for Christmas I just knew I had to see her. It took a while for us to get together though. Mariví was still seeing someone, a sculptor in Paris. And she had different guys calling her constantly.

M: Well those were different times. I was young and wanted to be free. No boyfriends!

Sandro: But then she sprained her ankle really badly and had to be looked after. I moved into her house, cooked and cleaned and just never moved out again.

And how soon after that did your lamp emporium start? M: A few years later. To tell you the truth we never thought we’d end up designing lamps, it was all an accident really. We started because we needed lamps for our first flat but we couldn’t afford buying the ones we liked. We started making very simple ones by using plywood, fiberglass and resin. They all had to go through a test of endurance: Sandro. Every finished lamp he would stand on and if it held it was ready to go.

S: Soon after we’d started making lamps Mariví got some money from the council because her flat was old and needed refurbishing. So we decided to take the money, make as many lamps as possible and sell them.

M: We arranged a huge party to celebrate and show off the lamps and everyone we knew came.

We were so busy dancing and drinking and talking the night away we totally forgot about the lamps! I don’t think we sold a single one.

S: So instead we spoke to a friend who owned a bakery in the centre of town and she agreed to lend us her shop at night. We brought all our lamps and set up shop from eleven at night till the early morning hours and because it was smack in the middle of the bar district.

Trade flourished. One night, two Argentinians came by and invited us to join them at a design fair in Madrid. We got our first big order there, from a guy who was setting up a hotel in Mallorca for German tourists. It was crazy. He gave his order to us on a napkin, for 600 lamps.

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The stand and products for ICFF in New York are ready to ship and the team celebrates with a paella feast on top of the boxes.

M: And at the time we had nothing – no staff, no space, no nothing! So we started calling around and soon we had everyone we knew working with us; parents, siblings, friends.

S: We went to visit the hotel after we had shipped the lamps off and it was a real holiday package place – horrible! But we have its proprietor to thank for a lot. His order was really what set us up as a company.

How do you divide the work between you?

S: When I used to teach English I would often struggle to make my students understand the difference between the words ‘make’ and ‘do’ because in Spanish there’s only one word – hacer.

I would say that Mariví is a maker and I’m a doer. Mariví is the one who creates and designs, and I deal with the clients and take care of all the practical day-to-day details of the company. In the beginning it was a whole other story – then I was strictly the worker and not allowed anywhere near the clients.

M: Oh, come on Sandro!

S: It’s true! I was the uncultured Australian and there was no way Mariví would let me talk to the public. And then she realized that it is actually really useful to have someone who speaks English. That’s how I got promoted from doing just the manual stuff. [Laughs] M: And the truth is that he’s a much better communicator than I am.

Do you fight? S: Oh god, yes, and it’s usually very dramatic. Mariví is like a little ninja power bomb – I’ve never seen someone so small make so much noise! I remember once she kicked me out of a hotel in Moscow at one in the morning, it was minus five degrees and all I could do

was walk around in the garden until we made up again.

M: Well you were a complete cabezón that time!

S: I know, I know. So yes, we have our fights. Actually, I think it’s good to have some drama in your life from time to time. It’s only natural, after all we live and work together. She’s a mono-tasker and I’m a multi-tasker and sometimes I can’t help but be annoyed that she gets so absorbed in her thing that she doesn’t see all the stuff that goes on around her. So I get frustrated and tend to become a bit of an asshole. Still though I must say that I sometimes think of the way we were able to start from zero and work side by side for eighteen years in relative harmony. How many couples can lay claim to that? I can’t help but feel that what we’ve created is no small feat.

When you look back at the years you’ve spent together, building up your relationship as well as your business, what’s your overriding feeling?

S: For us, everything that’s happened has been accidental. I always say that it’s been like stumbling constantly but never falling over. Now we finally feel like we’re walking.

M: Even if life would have taken us in another direction and we would have ended up doing something completely different, it would still have to be as intense as what we do now. After all, this is our life. I don’t think there’s much point getting involved in anything unless you do it wholeheartedly.

S: That said, I’ll tell you a little secret. The times when we’re the happiest are the times when we’re not working. There’s nothing better than being at home, all together with a pack of movies, eating out of the fridge like little piglets, without changing our clothes for days on end. There isn’t much that beats that feeling.

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Esther Castaño We drove into Yecla on a very grey day and by association pretty much everything around us was reflecting the dull hue of the sky – grey buildings, grey roads, grey grass, grey people. So it was quite a relief to enter the Sancal offices, where there was some colour to be seen at last. Sancal are certainly doing their share to add a touch of colour to their surroundings and most of that is thanks to Esther Castaño, the daughter of Santiago Castaño, the man who founded Sancal about three and a half decades ago. Under her guidance some of the most prominent contemporary Spanish designers have taken refuge from similarly bleak winter days at Sancal. Esther showed us where Sancal’s red, blue, green and yellow sofas are being made and then took us to her apartment in downtown Yecla, a space where design continues to matter. Amid all the grey, a little oasis of Japanese cartoon figurines and a somewhat faded C-3PO greeting us at the entrance.

colouring the world www.sancal.com

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45 How did you start working here? I’m a sociologist actually. I started out studying political science because I really wanted to travel, but then I discovered that what really gets me going are the details, so I switched to sociology and then to anthropology. Before coming here I was working with public health in Granada and I was quite settled there. But Sancal is a family company and in the back of my mind I always wanted to see what it would be like to work here, so I figured that it might be a good idea to try before I got too settled in Granada.

What sort of preparation did you have for this world? Formally, none at all. I never studied design or architecture or business or anything like that. My parents never pushed me in any particular direction, I was free to do exactly what

I wanted. But I used to come here most days after school because it’s where my parents were, and I had my own little corner with fabrics and things to play with. When I got a little older I started working at Sancal over the summer holidays so when I started for real, I already felt quite familiar with the place. My dad loves his work and I don’t think he’ll ever retire, but he also realised that the company needed renovation. He kept telling me, ‘This is the time for you to test your wings here, if I don’t hire you I’ll have to hire someone else.’ So I decided to try.

Since starting out at Sancal, Esther has been infusing her father’s minimalist style with her own less conventional taste.

Does your whole family work here? My parents both do but I have a younger sister, Elena, who’s twenty-six and lives in Barcelona and has nothing to do with the company. She studies art and works as an illustrator – my flat is full of her work.

Yes, I can see that! Your flat really looks like it belongs to someone who keeps up with design

Sancal

and interiors. I do love playing around with the objects we have here. Recently I rearranged the whole display on this table, coordinating it all in white. Then I get bored of that so I’ll change it again, say to all-red. Pottering around at home, arranging and rearranging stuff, is one of my favourite things to do. More juice?

Thank you. Why did your dad decide to set his company up in Yecla, of all places? Well, this is where he and my mum grew up, they’ve never lived anywhere else. Also, Yecla has an important upholstering textile industry, so starting a furniture business wasn’t so far off the mark.

My dad is self-taught and, like me, he’s really quite obstinate. Once he got it into his head that he wanted to open his company here, there was no changing his mind.

You said earlier that he’s still involved in the company. What does he do now? He’s always loved to develop the prototypes so that’s what he focuses on these days. I guess you could say that he’s part engineer, part artisan. He has a lot of attention for detail – structures that to me look identical, to him show a world of difference. He can tell exactly what works and what doesn’t and why something has to change. Both my dad and my mum are very much still a part of the company, my dad on the furniture development side and my mum doing pretty much the same thing, but with upholstering.

What was it like for you when you first came to Sancal? To be perfectly honest, it was like arriving on Mars! [Laughs] Even though I had spent a lot of time here growing up, what I thought the company was like turned out to be more of a figment of my imagination. I had to learn everything on the job, and it required a lot of adapta-

Sancal

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The Konoha bench by Toyo Ito is an example of Sancal’s latest products.

tion. But I felt that I had already studied enough so I wanted to learn by doing rather than leave again to do a Master’s degree in design or business. That was five years ago now, and I really have learned so much.

What was it like, moving from Granada back home to Yecla? Oh god, it was a huge change – I’d been gone for ten years, after all. While I was in Granada was always able to travel so I constantly had a lot of stimuli. Yecla, on the other hand, as you may have noticed, is quite grey. Although strictly speaking it qualifies as a small town, it really has the mentality of a village.

Coming back here meant a change of everything: work, city, home, rhythm of life. I needed time to adapt; leaving all my friends behind, rediscovering old faces and settling into family life wasn’t always easy. But it was what I wanted. Even so, the fact that I’m stubborn like a mule has been both my blessing and my curse.

The first three years I practically lived at Sancal, working 24/7 to learn everything and establish my vision of the company.

What about now? The last two years I’ve been able to find more time for myself, outside of work, to read, watch movies, listen to music, travel. I have a lot of friends in Murcia and Valencia and my partner and I often go there on the weekends to see them, and Internet certainly helps to keep me in touch with the world. And at work it has been so gratifying to see how a whole team

of professionals are learning with me, leaving certain old habits behind and adapting to the new times.

Was there anything in particular that you wanted to change at Sancal when you started? This may sound a little vain, but I wanted to make it more of a reflection of my personality and taste.

I mean, Sancal has always been a company with a very personal vision and aesthetic, but before it was the vision of another person. My dad loves minimalism, he’s really quite austere. He’s like a monk – I think he’d be perfectly happy living in a cave with candlelight! [Laughs] Our look still revolves around clean lines and unfussy design, but I’m much more heterodox and a lot more materialistic than he is.

Does the fact that you have different visions often lead to disagreements or fights? Well, we were arguing over the colour of a new sofa just this morning! He wanted black of course and I was trying to convince him that color would be so much better. But our disagreements don’t usually last that long. I’m lucky like that; both my parents have immense respect for my opinions. I’m also much more eloquent than my dad so I tend to be able to convince him that my way is, in fact, best. Although, come to think of it, maybe I only think that he lets me win our arguments. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s all a strategy on his part, and really he’s getting his way despite it all! [Laughs]

Sancal

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Mercedes & Alberto While we wait for Mercedes Laso Galbis and Alberto Ales, our hosts at Expormim, to turn up we have ample time to study a wooden plaque nailed to the wall in their conference room. It’s called The Winner and it pitches the loser against the winner in a series of scenarios.

One of them states, ‘The winner sees an answer for every problem; the loser sees a problem for every answer.’

I imagine how this principle has been a guiding light for Expormim throughout many a dark day. After all, this is a company that over fifty years and three generations of the same family has learnt to adapt to constantly changing fashions and clients’ needs. Today Mercedes and her sister Mónica continue to produce the same type of wicker furniture as their grandfather did when he first started his business, but aided by Alberto, the new kid on the block, they’re also trying ever more vigorously to find their feet in a cultural climate dominated by design and expanding markets.

broadening horizons www.expormim.es

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Designer Alberto Ales has brought renewed energy to the company, moving away from its traditional wicker products.

It’s so interesting to see how the vast majority of businesses in this area of Spain are family affairs. Yours is too, right? Mercedes: Yes, that’s true. My grandfather started the company here in 1960. They used to get the materials from Cuenca and weave all the wicker objects right here. In the 80s my father took it over and expanded the range and scope of what we could produce. I started working here in 1995, and when my father died last year my sister and I took over the business. Now we’ve divided the responsibility between us: Mónica takes care of international affairs and I deal with the domestic side.

Did you always want to work for your father?

M: No, I actually studied chemistry and then marketing in Valencia, not far from here. I wanted to work with marketing for a cosmetics company. But when I left my studies and started looking for work my father kept asking me to come and work for him. He was quite persistent, although he kept insisting that there was ‘no pressure’. I was really only meant to stay while I was looking for a job. The idea was that as soon as I’d found the job I wanted I would leave.

But, of course, once I started I got more and more involved and without even noticing time kept passing until one day I realised that I’d stopped looking for work. That was fifteen years ago now.

How has the company changed since then?

M: Well, traditionally the furniture companies

in this area of Spain have always approached product-making from a very intuitive and artisanal standpoint, and we were the same.

We would import the raw material and make everything here. There were very few companies that made wicker furniture and we were well known in our niche – whenever someone wanted wicker they would come to us. Eventually though, all that changed. In the 80s the import prices went up drastically because the countries exporting the wood wanted to expand their own production infrastucture. We had a hard time keeping up with our competitors, who were increasing in number by the day. We couldn’t afford to keep importing raw material so we moved our production to Indonesia, long before most other companies started doing the same.

What happened to all the workers you had here in Mogente? Did you let them all go? M: We wanted to keep as many as we could, of course, so we started experimenting new resources that weren’t reliant on import. First we added wood and cane to our rattan furniture to make it more versatile and expand our range of products. Then, about six years ago, we began working with synthetic materials, like plastic, and today those pieces have become our bestsellers – they outsell the rattan pieces by far. They look pretty similar to the pieces made of bamboo or cane but are a lot easier to maintain.

The most drastic change took place about six years ago. We were getting more and more competition from companies abroad, so in order to

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Expormim’s carpentry workshop in 1981 (above). Expert weaver John Jayro (left) has been working at the company for six years. In order to make the Air Chair (below), a retired artisan from Valencia had to teach the process to the Indonesian manufacturers through drawings.

set ourselves apart from our rivals we realised that we had to start taking a more considered approach to design. So we took on Alberto, and started moving away from placing all the emphasis on our traditional pieces into an area that was much more design focused.

Alberto: And last year we started experimenting with outdoor furniture that isn’t wicker at all, in order to broaden our horizons a little and set ourselves apart from the competition even more. After all, today we live in a world where design is as important as quality and we want to respect that.

What about fashion? What do the trends in wicker furniture look like now? M: We can feel it changing actually. Synthetic materials have been really popular since the 80s but now we’re noticing that clients have started asking for natural fibers again. Plastic will always be more practical when it comes to outdoor furniture, but the real thing has a charm that’s hard to beat. We work with all types of rattan and try to develop as many different techniques as we can. Now we’re experimenting with the notion of furniture that can be used both indoors and outdoors. It’s all well and good to keep selling to hotels in the Caribbean, but in order to get Europe and America more interested we have to take their climate into consideration.

A: Another thing that we’ve noticed is that the fashion for a particular style lasts about six years, after that the popularity of a piece of furniture inevitably fades. When we design we’ve got to keep that in mind.

Wow! That chair over there looks pretty amazing.

Can I try it out? A: Of course, go ahead! It’s really comfortable actually. It’s one of our most complex pieces. It’s so difficult to make that the guys at our factory in Indonesia couldn’t work out how to do it. In the end we had to get an artisan from Spain who’s been weaving wicker furniture all her life, somebody’s retired grandmother in fact, to explain it to them. It took a lot of drawings and even more patience to get it all right. It’s the most complicated weaving process that we do; it takes five days for a weaver to finish.

Really? A: Yes, that’s more than twice as long as it would usually take. But what you get in the end is really a piece that’s unique, and nearly all made by hand, combining technical know-how with time-honoured tradition. And that pretty much sums up what I love about Expormim.

M: Me too. We have been able to weather out some pretty big changes in our industry and we are still here, still strong. We are all very modest people though, we’re not used to being the focus of interviews. We are designers, that’s true, but whatever we’ve got to say we prefer to say through our products.

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Nani Marquina The offices of nanimarquina are located in a former textile factory, all red brick and tall windows.

Nani is still in a meeting, so I sit in the showroom among the brightly coloured rugs and observe her father, the designer Rafael Marquina, who at 90 continues to work and every Thursday comes to town to occupy one of the fishbowl offices and hold meetings. There’s also Nani’s daughter and her husband, Nani’s sister, and a former and a current sentimental partner. This doesn’t feel so much like a company as a telenovela. But Nani’s work and private life are pretty much one anyway.

Yet while her office is as lively and colourful as her rugs, her home is white and minimalistic – Nani’s way of finding a minimum of peace of mind. Still, it’s full of memorable details, as if her emotional approach to life made her leave little imprints of herself on everything she touches.

family knit www.nanimarquina.com

56 Nani Marquina doesn’t immediately remember how old she was when she launched her business. Jotting down numbers on a piece of paper, she finally looks up and declares: ‘thirty-three.’ Some people say it’s not polite to reveal a woman’s age, but Nani doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who would mind. That was twenty-five years ago. Nani Marquina is fifty-eight.

Over those past twenty-five years, Nani has gathered her family around herself. Her daughter started working with her at the age of twenty-one, fell in love with one of the employees, got married and now has a child, whom she also brings to the office from time to time.

‘This company is a bit of a soap opera,’ Nani says. ‘But I think it’s typical for a company with a lot of emotional intenIndia, 2007. Nani making sity. I’m a very emotionally intense perthe Dolce rug together son, I throw myself at life and work, so with a weaver. things like this happen.’

The three men in Nani Marquina’s life are also somehow involved in her business. Four, if you count her father, who for a while was a silent partner. In 1987, a few years after splitting up with her husband, the father of her daughter, she launched the company with her then Pakistan, 1999. Nani at boyfriend. When they broke up a few years later, she a local market on her first bought him out. Over twenty years after the separation visit to the country. from her husband, he started working for the company as a consultant – ‘and because he was very expensive, I made him a partner,’ Nani says. Meanwhile, her current sentimental partner, a photographer, accompanies her on her trips to weaving mills in India, Pakistan, Morocco and Cameroon, photographically documenting their work.

‘For me it’s very important to tell this story, of our lives, of how we work. To bring people closer to this world of artisanship, of India.

Because that’s the only way to distinguish our company. If not, you’re just another rug business, and I’ve always been interested in being a little different,’ Nani explains. I object that her products surely stand out enough already. She doesn’t seem satisfied. She wants Nanimarquina to differentiate itself not only through her rugs, but also through the human face she gives them.

The first time Nani travelled to India was in 1993. It was just after she bought out her ex-boyfriend, the company’s co-founder. The country had been plunged into economic crisis. Her local suppliers, tired because she owed them money and asked for designs too difficult for them to make, were threatening the delivery deadline of an important order. ‘I met someone India, 2006. Nani observes the laying out of the who told me he knew manufacturAsia rug at one of the workshops. ers in India, and one day when I arrived at the office very angry because of my local suppliers, I had some sort of attack –I’m every impulsive– and called my acquaintance and said, ‘Do you want to come to India with me?’ The two trav-

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59 elled to Panapat, an industrial town north of New Delhi famous for its weaving mills, and Nani found manufacturers who were able to deliver her order on time. Thus she was able to recover some money and maintain her head above water. ‘That’s why I always say that India saved me.’

India continues to save her – both her business and her sanity. She goes on average once a year. ‘Inspiration comes when you get out. Maybe there are people who can be geniuses locked in their little studio, but not me. Here I’m solving problems all day, but the moment I leave, it’s as if I got to know a different world. There’s nothing worse for a creative person than being stuck in a rut. What makes me wiser is getting to know new things. Beautiful and ugly things. They put you into a state of mind in which you start generating ideas.’ She tells me about one of the last trips to India, which she undertook with two designers and her son-in-law. Upon their return, her daughter came to pick them

Since she was sixteen, Nani has been collecting tea pots and souvenirs brought back from her travels. The collection now fill three long shelves in her apartment.

nanimarquina

up at the airport. ‘She looked at us, turned to me and said, ‘What’s with you? Everybody looks tired except you!’ And it was true. It was as if my energy had been regenerated.’

There are two striking things about Nani. One is her openness. The other is her emotional approach to running a company.

She doesn’t mind telling you that she didn’t use to like the idea of having a family business. Or how difficult it was for her to work with her daughter. How roles got mixed up with other employees. How much energy it costs to manage relationships. How she struggled to learn to lead. But also how much it all makes you grow as a person. ‘If I hadn’t been in this situation, I wouldn’t have learned to treat my daughter in a different way. It requires effort. And everything that requires effort means you’re learning,’ she says.

Today she appreciates the special value of a family business. ‘It’s very positive to have a family business because there’s continuity.

There’s a special interest in looking after things because a family’s ultimate sense is to grow. To grow and to multiply. I think the same happens in a family business. Everything has a deeper sense.’

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Javier Marset Javier Marset is a man who very much enjoys life.

He laughs constantly. He says what he thinks, but doesn’t take himself too seriously. And he likes being with people. We started this interview at the Marset showroom, on a Friday shortly before lunchtime. From there, we went to the market and then to his place, where Javier cooked a whole sea bass with potatoes, onions and tomatoes. When he finally walked us to the station, hours later, he suddenly stopped and asked, ‘Who wants gin and tonics?’ He is the visible face and one half of the lighting company Marset (the other half being his younger brother). It’s Javier who, together with Marset Creative Director Joan Gaspar, chooses the designers who will end up making lamps for them. They’re everywhere in his home, which is beautiful and incredibly tidy, especially considering that he has two children. You can tell Javier doesn’t settle for anything sub-standard.

the good life www.marset.com

62 Do you cook often? Sometimes. Outside work, I lead a very relaxed life. I like art, culture, design...

I like gastronomy, as part of culture. We are what we eat. If you eat shit, you’re a shit-eater. Don’t write that! I think that gastronomic culture is super important, it defines a country. You know, food has to be good. We only eat every meal once a day, so if you don’t do it well, you’ve missed your chance for the day. One has to be careful with that. You can’t just go anywhere to eat.

Is there anything you don’t eat? I don’t eat bad food. I like simple dishes. Good, simple dishes.

63 It’s about finding the good stuff. It’s that simple.

You have to be educated in recognising quality, quality in everything around you. Even in the people you surround yourself with. I’m interested in meeting good people. So art... well, I like good art. You have to apply some judgment.

Why did you decide to get into the lighting business? Because my grandfather made them. And because I like it. Once you’ve entered this industry, you become hooked. I know many people whom that’s happened to. It’s magical.

How come? Because light unveils matter. Light allows you to appreciate matter. A grey day is horrible. A sunny day is a completely different thing. It’s the same with artificial light. A lamp can generate either incredible well-being or terrible discomfort. Have you ever been to a place that was badly illuminated, full of spotlights and blueish fluorescent lights? What a shit place!

How can you live here? People have to learn about light. I think that lighting is becoming ever more important. It’s a shame that incandescent bulbs are disappearing. You know what Ingo Maurer has done? Ingo Maurer is pissed off about the disappearance of incandescent lightbulbs... Well, actually they’re not disappearing, what’s happened is that they’ve banned frosted bulbs. Now bulbs are very bright.

So Ingo Maurer, who’s a lighting poet, a very intelligent man who always makes fun of the badly done things in the world, has proposed a condom for lightbulbs, to filter light again. Anyway, I have a secret stash of frosted lightbulbs. One day they’ll be very valuable.

What would you say about Ferran Adrià? Have you been to his new place? Tickets? No, I think it’s a bit of a hassle that you have to reserve on the internet.

And to El Bulli? Yes, I go to El Bulli every year. This year I’ve got a table on 21 April. I don’t even know how I got it. Through a friend maybe.

But that isn’t simple food, is it?

No, that’s different. It’s a sensorial experience. But anyway, El Bulli isn’t the restaurant I like best. I think it would have to be Etxebarri, a grill room in the Basque Country by Victor Arguinz Oniz. It’s a temple of gastronomy! Contemporary cuisine starts at Etxebarri and ends at El Bulli. Victor cooks like our ancestors: he chooses the wood he’ll cook with, so it’s the best raw material you can imagine.

But El Bulli is sophistication, it’s an experience.

El Bulli is a game. Etxebarri is serious.

In Barcelona, where do you eat? There are only two places where you can eat. The one is Alkimia, the other is Coure. They’re the only impeccable ones. Alkimia is more sophisticated, Coure is simpler, but both use incredible ingredients.

Those are the ones I like best. There are some others, but not many. Coure is like our canteen. Ah, you know where else you can eat well? At Shunka. My wife and kids love Shunka. I’m educating them to appreciate good things.

You’ve been taking your kids to Shunka? Oh, yes.

And to Etxebarri.

I see you like art, too. Yes, a lot. But you know, my liquid assets only allow me to buy certain works...

Is Ingo Maurer actually producing that? Yes, I think so. It’s a latex sleeve.

Why is it forbidden to make frosted incandescent lightbulbs, but not normal ones? Because some enlightened spirit thought that it’s more energyefficient to remove the frosted part. And they’re right, of course! But it’s not all about energy efficiency! What about comfort? Wellbeing? Or are we going to measure everything by energy efficiency? Of course, in the cloak of sustainability some really outraging things are being said. Sustainability is fooling everyone. Sustainability starts with quality, by changing the way we consume, by consuming high-quality products. Prod-

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Javier’s lamps are carefully dotted around his apartment in Barcelona.

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64 ucts that aren’t throwaway objects. Let’s start by consuming fewer things, but good ones. You know the Catalan saying, ‘It’s better to eat little and digest well’? The same thing! I’m sure that half the things we own, we don’t even need. So why are we in this endless consumerist race? For the past few years, I’ve been buying hardly anything.

Food, some art, and the minimum of clothes necessary. I have two pairs of jeans, four jumpers and four shirts, and I’m always dressed the same. I’ve been educated that way, in quality, in respect for well-made things.

That’s sustainability.

The problem I see is that political movements opposing that consumerist trend are very radical. Yes, but careful: this is about quality, and quality doesn’t mean luxury. Luxury is another concept I hate. Luxury is excess.

Hey, I’d been saving that! Well tough luck.

How do you select your designers? What do you look at? I don’t care whether the designer is tall, short, good-looking or ugly. I want the design to have something, a spark. I want it to be interesting. First of all, I have to like it. Then Joan Gaspar has to like it. And when we both like it, we’re ok. Like that one by Mathias Hahn.

What all designers do now is make prototypes and publish them somewhere online. It’s all in the air. It’s just a question of grabbing it. And that’s what we did with that lamp. We saw a concept published in Dezeen.

SEA BASS Á LA MARSET

So how do you filter? We receive a lot of proposals, but the majority doesn’t fit out company vision. Look, recently I was asked: ‘Why don’t you work with celebrity designers?’ And I said, “Because all those Italian companies have them all already.” You think I wouldn’t like to work with Jasper Morrison or Patricia Urquiola?

Tell me a little about the company history. We used to make more traditional lamps, but in the 60s, my uncle Pepe already incorporated design. The poor guy died in an accident at the age of forty-three. After he died came about twenty years when Marset was a little bit neglected. When I started at the company in ’93 I saw the mess and said, we either get our act together and start introducing originality, creativity and innovation, or we’re going under.

It’s like football. You have to find them before anyone else does. That’s what I do.

Did you study design? No, but I think I’m someone who likes innovation. Before working at Marset I worked in an advertising agency for two years, and the two years before in marketing and market research. It was a short but a very marking experience. By the way, did you see my bottle rack? Christophe made that for me.

Who? Christophe Mathieu, the designer of the Discocó lamp, which is our biggest success right now. Ten years ago. I told him I needed a bottle rack but I didn’t want a wooden one, they’re too heavy. So he designed this one, made from textile. Have you ever seen a textile bottle rack? It’s foldable. I’m going to steal a bit of wine from you.

And how? Just doing it. It’s a bit of everything. In the end I saw a product that Rich Brilliant Willing had done and I said, ‘I want to meet them.’

That’s where it began. I like discovering. It’s not easy at all, but I do also like to play my own game and discover stars to be!

So it’s intuitive? Yes, of course. You have to be open to everything. In the end, it’s a question of curiosity, of being curious.

Ok, but when you like a lamp, how do you know whether anyone else will? It’s pure intuition. If I like something, I think that the people I know will like it, too. It’s what Ferran Amat has been doing at his Barcelona design shop Vinçon all his life. It’s the best distribution model there is, to say: ‘The only things that come in here are things I would have at home.’ Any simpler is impossible.

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One sea bass (or any other fish that can be baked whole and comes recommended by your fishmongers) Potatoes, sliced thinly but left together at the bottoms, so as not to fall apart, Onions, sliced Tomatoes, halved Olive oil, salt and pepper.

Place everything in a baking tray, the onions forming a bed for the fish so they don’t burn. Season and cover in three fingers of olive oil (don’t be stingy). Heat the oven at 180˚ C and bake the fish, without covering it, until it’s nice and brown. Serve with a simple green salad and two bottles of good white wine.

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66 Arturo Alvarez www.arturo-alvarez.com calor-color@arturo-alvarez.com Enea Contract www.eneacontract.com enea@eredu.com Expormim www.expormim.es comercial@expormim.es KETTAL www.kettal.com info@grupokettal.com Lzf Lamps www.lzf-lamps.com info@lzf-lamps.com Marset www.marset.com info@marset.com nanimarquina www.nanimarquina.com info@nanimarquina.com Sancal www.sancal.com web@sancal.com Santa & Cole www.santacole.com info@santacole.com Teixidors www.teixidors.com teixidors@teixidors.com

Concept and Creative Direction Apartamento Magazine Art Direction Omar Sosa Photography Nacho Alegre Text Anja Aronowsky Cronberg Kati Krause Illustration Philip Stanton Creative consultant Maite Felices Printing CA Gráfica (Spain) Publisher Apartamento Magazine S.L. Corcega, 286 4-2B 08008 Barcelona Spain www.apartamentomagazine.com Oficio y Criterio is a publication produced and published as a supplement to issue #07 of Apartamento Magazine.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without permission from the publisher. The views expressed in this publication are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the publisher and its staff.

All these companies are members of RED, the association of Spanish design companies www.red-aede.es/blog info@red-aede.es

credits

oficio y criterio. 10 Spanish Creators

Arturo of Arturo Alvarez on living in balance. Alex and Antonio of KETTAL on searching for future classics. Juan and Antonia of Teixidors on weaving the fabric of society. Juan Carlos of Enea on simply doing things right. Nina of Santa & Cole on maintaining the original spirit. Sandro and Mariví of Lzf Lamps on passion. Esther of Sancal on colouring outside the lines. Mercedes and Alberto of Expormim on renewal. Nani of nanimarquina on learning to lead. Javier of Marset on appreciating the good things in life.