Artesanía de Galicia - obradoiro de artesanía

Twice-yearly publication from
Artesanía de Galicia
No. 3 June
2009
Foreword - issue 03
Through this new issue we intend to turn the magazine Obradoiro de Artesanía [Craft Workshop]
into a dual tool for communication, cohesion, development and the promoting of the Galician craft
sector. On the one hand – and just as we have proven in two previous issues – this publication functions as an internal means of communication between the sector and the initiatives that are being
set up from the Economics and Industry Council through the General Directorate of Trade and the
Galician Craft and Design Centre Foundation. It is also a swift communication tool within the sector,
so that the craftsmen themselves can get to know the work that is being carried out in the country,
can have a platform for exhibiting both the contemporary craftwork that is being made in Galicia
and also the relations that this sector holds with other areas such as design, photography, architecture, fashion and art. Indeed, in this third issue we are including an example of the link between
arts and crafts through the gaze of the director of the Luís Seoane Foundation on the engravings by
the craftswoman Anne Heyvaert.
On the other hand it is also a manner of divulging the sector abroad, a way of opening up craftwork through different distribution channels. The main one, as it grants greater access, is through
the web page for Galician Crafts, which up to now allowed one to make a free of charge PDF
download. In this issue we are introducing the novelty of the possibility of consulting each of the
sections of the magazines through a web space of its own, which can be reached through the page
www.artesaniadegalicia.org so that access may be made available to all those interested in the
contents included in each issue.
The other methods of distributing the magazine, which will start from this third issue, will bring it
to the tourist establishments throughout Galicia, to the international fairs which have institutional
craft stands, to the schools and training centres related to craftwork, and, of course, to the shops
that have adhered to the Galician Crafts brands. In this manner we hope to increase the presence
of our sector both in society and on the markets, and at the same time manage to show the great
possibilities that craftwork has a sector with a future.
As for the contents, we would like to highlight the central role played by the first edition of the Galician Handicraft Exhibition (MOA), held in February of this year, as well as the strong presence
of the traditional craft techniques that, as has become habitual, occupy an important place in this
magazine. In this sense we should highlight the reportages on two areas of Galicia that are greatly
connected to tourism: one the one hand Ribeira Sacra, where the weaver Anna Champeney works,
and, on the other, Ancares, where the basket-maker Carlos González is carrying out an important
task of research and recuperation. The work of the clog-maker Alberto Geada, that of the Taxus
lathe workshop, the Códice bookbinders and the craft application by Luthiers to current Galician
music, are a good example of the combination between innovation and design on traditional craftwork that is taking place nowadays in Galicia.
Finally, this issue also stands out because it binds together two activities that are not usually related
with craftwork, such as scenography – which we will know through the hands of the characters and
the sets from the Kukas workshop – and then the making of nets, through a report on the O Feital
de Malpica Net-makers Association. The intention is thus to offer an overview of the heterogeneity
of the Galician crafts sector and to stimulate its great possibilities of development in the future.
summary
04
Textiles with the Ribeira Sacra official denomination
12
Patterns of Life
18
Between Wicker and Mego Baskets
24
Nets, the Invisible Work
30
Gallery
40
Opinion
46
Makers of Harmony
52
At the Heart of theWood
58
Prêt à Porter Clogs
64
Literature Tailors
70
To Duplicate Reality. Anne Heyvaert
Published by
Dirección Xeral de Comercio
Consellería de Economía e Industria
Coordinated by
Maruxa Ledo Arias / María Guerreiro
Fundación Centro Galego da Artesanía e do Deseño
L25MN Área Central 15707 Santiago de Compostela
TN: 881 999 523 Fax 881 999 170
e-mail: prensa.artesania@xunta.es
www.artesaniadegalicia.org
Design, edition and production
dardo ds
dardo@dardo-ds.com
Photography
Miguel Calvo, Marcio Machado, dardo ds and
contributions from the craftsmen
Translation
David Prescott
L.D.: C-4788-2008
Textiles with the Ribeira
Sacra official denomination
Fabric surrounds us all throughout our lives. It identifies us culturally and socially. And yet it goes unnoticed, eclipsed by fashion and ephemeral tendencies.
Anna Champeney, an English ethnographer, has invested in revitalising a technique that is natural to the region but which was about to become forgotten:
Galician pile fabric. Although it is not precisely documented, this technique is
around one thousand five hundred years old. Ten years ago she left her life in
Norfolk, which is her home in the south of England, and moved to the heart of
Ribeira Sacra, to Cristosende, in a house with a view over the River Sil, where
she makes cloth “with roots”, which release all the strength of the soil and the
culture in which they are made.
Anna Champeney discovered Os Ancares in 1995 when she was making a study on popular
craft work, where she discovered a bed coverlet made with the technique of Galician pile fabric
that was in a very bad state. “When I touched it in order to take a photograph of it, it came
apart, and I thought, ‘What a nice piece of work and in such a bad state.’” This aroused an
interest that led her to draw up a project exclusively dedicated to these coverlets. “I got the idea
that this is what I wanted to do, to take up a tradition that is about to be lost and give it life
again, to resuscitate a tradition”. So this English ethnographer decided to make a halt in her
professional life and devote herself to textile production in the company of her husband, the
Catalan craftsman Lluis Grau, who produces craftwork basket in which he also recovers traditional Galician basketwork.
“What we are
promoting are
original works,
we want there
to be pride in
this tradition
here in this
country”
Cristosende, a village on the banks of the River Sil, was the place chosen when almost ten years
ago they started out on an overall project in order to link craftwork with a sustainable rural farming idea. Here they are not only producing textiles and baskets, but are also preparing a rural
tourism inn which provides the possibility to take training courses in their workshops. And since
they arrived in Cristosende life in this tranquil village has been changing: visitor numbers grew,
particularly coming from abroad and from places that are quite unusual in areas like these. In
October, for example, a student will be coming from Mauritius.
“All of us Galician weavers need to seek a place of our own and make very special products, and
one of the ways of doing this is to connect the works to a tradition or to a zone, in my case to Ribeira
Sacra”. Anna Champeney is aware oft he fact that her works reflect the colours of this land. Not only
this, she has also taken traditional works from the area, which were the red sacks, and has recuper-
Galician Pile Fabric
This technique that Anna Champeney is recuperating is estimated to be 1,500 years old,
even though it is not well documented as it has
hardly been researched. It consists of pulling
out each bouclé by hand, which makes it very
painstaking work, given that in a small item,
like a cushion, there are over 3,000 bouclés.
The coverlets were made in bright colours and
were decorated with floral motifs or geometric
forms.
“At every step in making
the fabrics there is a
philosophy of respect for
nature”
ated them for use
today. “I make a
line of sacks and
little sacks, which
are the works inspired by the red
sacks of Ribeira
Sacra, items that
no one uses anymore to pick chestnuts, which was what they
were used for before. But instead for bread, for garlic, for
spices... It is another way of taking a traditional work and
giving it a new life”.
In her work the sources of inspiration are two very differentiated ones. On the one hand this is the fruit of a reflective process which is very closely linked to the origin and
meaning of the works. The other is more in keeping with the
technical production: “It is the textile structure and the design
in itself, the crossing of the stitches, the interweaving, the
interaction of the colours, which change in the weaving and
affect perception”. For her, the act of weaving itself only represents a quarter of everything that goes into the process of
making. “I always start out by making a drawing on paper
and then I go on to make samples, sometimes mistakes, but
I always try to do things differently”. The textile drawing has
something “technical and mathematical” about it, which is
brought into play with the creative part. What she is working
with now are cloths that crease. “The challenge is to work
with different combinations of threads in order to make cloth
with texture, textiles with a great deal of life”.
When it is a matter of works made in Galician pile fabric, she tries to explore new uses and different ideas that
are now no longer daily use items, which were those that
have traditionally been made but which, due to their technical complexity, nowadays have very high costs. In this field
she makes cushions and is also preparing a collection of
pictures. All of this using a handicraft technique that is as
old as Galician pile fabric, which grants an added value
to the works. “I am interested in expressing myself through
the cloth, thinking of Galician culture, in my experience as
a foreigner resident in Galicia, in the passion that I have for
the Galician people, in the history of weaving in”. And she
concludes, “For me it is a dialogue between myself as an
English woman and Galician culture”.
Research
“The craft of the weaver is one of the most complex ones, because as a craftsman you have problems in finding sources
of good material, you have difficulties at the time of drawing
up patterns and selling your work is not always easy”. Indeed, Anna believes that this is why the weaver women that
she has met have such a strong personality. Like her teacher
of Galician pile fabric, Ermelinda Espín, an eighty-year-old
woman from Lugo from whom she learned the technique that
she would then research in greater depth. “Between 1995
and 1998 I came across a large number of women who
worked on textiles – retired women, their daughters, customers – and little by little I started to understand this tradition better, but above all it is the quilts that really teach one
how to work on this craft. There are hardly any
craftsmen now who learnt the original tradition,
just fragments, which are the works that have
survived”.
She has documented about two hundred items,
which she has analysed, observed and photographed. “I think it is very important to conserve
the works and divulge the information”, and so
in the future she would like to compile a book
so all this information will be available for not
only Galician weavers, but people from other
countries. “Galicia has a very particular textile
tradition, and it can only be understood when
one sees many examples”,
but she stresses that it is im“The more the public tries
portant for one to recognise
out and gets to know the
its cultural and ethnographic
value. “In my opinion there
process of craftwork, the
is a need for an artistic and
cultural language to be able
more they will appreciate
to talk about these works;
the works we make”
they are seen as works from
the past, but I think that they
also have an artistic value”,
and in this manner one could use the Galician
textile tradition as a source of inspiration for
modern pieced “which still have roots”. Champeney calls this “fusion”, something which also
inspires her work.
This recognition will also favour the distribution
of her work on the internal market, given that up
to now she sells most of her work outside Galicia. “What I see her is that there is no market
10
for it now, perhaps because it is a technique
that is too close to the past, to a rural past that
is still stained by disdain or by a nostalgia that
does not allow things from the past to have a
life of their own in a modern context”. There are
Galician pile fabric works that have reached
England or Germany, in which no one was interested in Galicia. “What we are promoting
are original works, from Galicia, and we want
there to be pride in this tradition here in this
country”.
For this reason here work is centred on keeping
this technique alive. “As a non-Galician weaver,
I see something that is here which is precious,
and we have to fight to keep it alive”, for which
she seeks innovation and to open up different
paths, such as textile art.
She also believes that the existence of a relationship between fashion designers and weavers,
particularly focusing on the torch design, may
help the sector become more well-known. And,
according to Champeney, what is being offered
is quality and exclusivity: “these are hand-prepared dyes, limited, well-produced series; it is
quality material”. Besides, an added value is
their ecological value: her loom is completely
manual, the workshop is lit by Velux type windows, saving electric light, the dyes she uses are
vegetable based, and what is left over is used to
make manure for the kitchen-garden. “At every
step in making the fabrics there is a philosophy
of respect for nature and a clear desire to reduce the environmental impact of my activity”.
Creative Tourism
Champeney and Grau propose a different kind of holiday, through creative tourism, an idea that is not yet established in Galicia but which has
many attractive qualities. The idea is to bring together a leisure stay, such
as a weekend or a week, with training in the area of fabrics or basket-making. A training extra for a different way of enjoying a stay in the unique
landscape of Ribeira Sacra, for which one may board at the A Casa dos
Artesáns [The Artisans’ House] rural tourism lodge. A house in which one
may see original coverlets made using the technique of Galician pile fabric
or a collection of portraits of craft workers made by Champeney herself. In
this sense they highlight the importance that they take on in relation to the
knowledge and the creative experience of this type of stay, which are good
for people’s well-being. For this reason they provide different possibilities,
both for beginners and for those who wish to perfect their technique as
craft workers who want to refresh their knowledge. “For people who have
never thought of doing craftwork and perhaps had doubts about their capacity to do it, we have introductory sessions that are easy and have good
results with relatively little effort”, Anna explains, as she indicates that she
11
12
The Colours of Nature
conceives the improvement sessions as “a creative
retreat in an environment conducive to creativity”.
Indeed, Champeney stresses that this type of approach favours an increasing of sensitivity towards
craftwork: “the more the public tries out and gets to
know the process of craftwork, the more they will
appreciate the works we make. I think that in Galicia we need to carry out a dynamic and interactive
divulging of this work”.
On the other hand, they are seeing that this possibility is having more success abroad than in their
own country: they have received visits from people from Denmark and from Great Britain, but still
haven’t had any Galicians. “It has to be said that
it is relatively easier to come to Ribeira Sacra for
some creative summer holidays from La Corunna
or Madrid, and I hope that in the future we will be
able to connect to the interest that there is in Galicia and in the rest of the State”.
Anna Champeney
Cristosende, 78
32765 A Teixeira
TN: 669 600 620
www.annachampeney.com
www.casa-dos-artesans.com
lluisyanna@terra.es
The threads that Anna
Champeney uses bear the
colours of Ribeira Sacra.
Both the linen and the wool,
or even the sophisticated
Cashmere are naturally
dyed by herself. Although
she has to buy some of the
plants because they do not
grow well in this area, such
as indigo, she takes other
ones straight from nature.
Gorse or onion bulbs are
some of these, and have a
wide-ranging spectrum of
colours, some so intense
that it seems incredible that
it is possible to obtain them
in a natural way. “I consider
that they are unique colours
and have a special harmony, they combine very
well, and thus gives me a
wide range of colours”, but
this also solves a practical
problem common to many
craftsmen: “It is very difficult
to find quality thread. I am
buying them from a Catalan
company, and I have to buy
in large quantities; it would
be impossible to collect so
much of each colour”. So
she is considering the possibility of commercialising the
threads.
“I love having close contact
with the materials, being
able to go out of my house
and find the plants. This
also gives me the chance to
make works that have roots
here, which are the colours
of Ribeira Sacra”, Anna
Champeney states.
13
Patterns of Life
Kukas’s Puppets
Someone once stated that being a puppeteer was
something bad. Kukas and Isabel have devoted
themselves to this for thirty years, and believe
that it is the best profession in the world. Kukas
is today the indisputable name in the making of
large-headed carnival figures or puppets, without ever stopping imagining, or pergheñar, as
they say locally. A trade that mixes the stage arts
and plastic arts, literature and music and magic.
Over these years he has been gathering the vice
of thinking, the healthy vice of never stopping
creating. They are therefore convinced that the
best thing about Galician craftwork is the creativity that it releases, that stands out wherever
it goes. Kukas’s puppets have exchanged the
fold-away theatre box for magnificent stagings
and huge casts like the Galician Royal Philharmonic, without ever losing the essence of the
company: everything remains to be invented.
14
“We have always taken
risks on the plastic and
conceptual levels and
there have never been
any problems”
“We have had to struggle, going around with our gear in a rucksack. Nowadays we perform in very important theatres, the Arriaga, the Campoamor…, huge theatres”. Thus speaks Marcelino
de Santiago, better known as Kukas, a name inseparable from the
history of puppets in Galicia. Because if today it is possible to enjoy
a puppet show, it wasn’t the case only thirty years ago when he
began his career as a puppeteer and maker of marionettes. “At
the beginning there was nothing; we are self-taught”. A work of
acknowledging and dignifying this craft was always present in their
professional course. But that is also the stimulus, when everything
has to be done. Even the word. Isabel Rei, who, along with Kukas,
is one of the pillars of Kukas’s puppets, smiles as she recalls that
they chose the name “monicreques” for the company because of its
sound qualities, and which referred to the rag dolls that got carried
on one’s back. “Before no one used this term, and now people even
correct us if we say ‘marionettes’”.
Dolls, rag dolls, ugly face dolls, puppets, big-heads, marionettes…,
whatever they are called, they are their lives. Kukas’s hands have
been building, carving and shaping the recent history of marionettes
in Galicia. His company is devoted both to the production of shows
and to the making of the sets that we usually see in theatres or on TV,
such as in the Xabarín Club. And they are easily recognizable, with a
style and a design that are clearly colourist, brutally expressive, and
full of strength and emotion. An eclectic style, as Isabel and Kukas
call it, as each work is unique. “Each work has its own style. I don’t
think that a work has to be made by the same standard. It is like a
child. I’m not really in favour of this matter of copying oneself and
making fifty copies of the same thing”. Isabel highlights the explosion
of colour in her work, along with her finishing touches. “A lot of people know you due to the way you finish the work, both marionettes
and stage sets, treating them pictorially like paintings”.
The protagonists of Seven Capital Stories are made out of papier-mâché for the heads, and the bodies are made of carved and painted wood.
15
The show Untitled 4x8x6. Mixed media on stage set, used the creative process of a craftsmen who makes puppets which, in a leap of
magic, jump out of the sketch on the paper into reality, producing
a whole puppet show on the boards, made with the same materials
and the most unlikely techniques, ranging from classical rod marionettes to others made with pots, clothes hangers and scrap material.
Kukas, as a craftsman, has a very clear and stable working process,
in which the first and longest phase is that of thinking, “going round
in one’s head” until coming to the point at which the design can be
visualized, to go on to the technical phase of production, which only
depends on his technical skills.
And the creative freedom is also greater, both on the technical and
conceptual level. Having a studio in Compostela thirty years ago was
much more complicated, as finding mechanisms or slightly unusual
materials implied having to go to Madrid or Barcelona. Nowadays,
thanks to the Internet, it is much simpler and everything is within reach.
And on the conceptual level everything remained to be done, so there
was nothing left to do but take a chance. “In the theatre and with
marionettes it is important to run certain risks. There was no school,
so we tried things out ourselves, and at best we would have to eat the
show with potatoes”, yet Isabel tones down Kukas’s reasoning: “We
always took risks on the plastic level and on the text and conceptual
level, and we had no problems”. For this reason each type of show is
thought out, discussed and debated, and its plan is drawn up according to the idea. Each work requires it own puppet, with its style and
its language. “The characteristic of our shows is that we work hard on
the articulated puppet, with unusual or invented mechanisms, with a
cardboard articulated head and a wooden body”, Isabel explains.
Doubts are arising in relation to the continuity of this craft, something
which often threatens so many crafts and workshops. This is generally positive, although, like everything else, thinks could be improved,
16
and Kukas points out that training is needed for the tradition not to be
lost. This is the direction they are taking, with an ambitious large-scale
proposal. The Puppet House is a project that is at the moment going
through the phase of “negotiation”, explains Isabel, a centre that is
indispensable today, as a logical step to take on their trajectory. “This
is very ambitious for Galicia, but there are similar things throughout
the world”, so Kukas sees that its viability and pertinence would be
justified. “We are trying to set about creating a centre that will include
training as well as a museum”, something which Isabel feels is very
necessary. “We have a vast heritage, we have all the marionettes,
which are a part of the history of marionettes in Galicia, and a very
important part. We have kept all the settings, and when we exhibit
our puppets we do this as a set, as a part of the show”, something
which is very showy but which occupies a lot of space. Now, for example, they are in the Galician Craftwork Centre, in Lugo. “We have
more or less structured the basis of what will be the permanent exhibition of our work”, a space that will also receive temporary showings
from other companies and from other places.
“Kukas is a person who as a maker, as a craftsman, is very well
known, and it is a shame if this experience and expertise is lost”,
and Isabel thinks that the workshop, both in terms of making puppets and in teaching others, would be a way of bringing stability
to the profession and providing jobs. Because research and experiment have always been a constant factor in designing Kukas’s puppets, in which they acknowledge the great influence on them in this
sense by Paco Peralta and Matilde del Amo. “They came to give
a course in Galicia, and they taught us a new way of designing
marionettes, here we had kept to glove and rod puppets”, and they
consider themselves to be disciples of these two Andalusian puppeteers. “They gave the vice to me.” She finishes off by acknowledging
Kukas himself. One of his major contributions as a craftsman is the
research he has done into the string support, which has greatly sim-
plified the manipulating of the puppet, and which, according to Isabel, has amazed the eastern European puppeteers,
who have a greater tradition in the field of marionettes.
The first recognition that Kukas received as a creator and
manipulator of puppets was in Bilbao, in 1997, from the
Puppet Documentation Centre. Two years earlier the Peoples
of Spain Theme Park in Kintsetsu in Japan commissioned six
marionettes from him, which one can visit in its permanent
exhibition. They are, indeed, one of the companies with the
greatest distribution outside Galicia, because, according to
Kukas, “the only thing we can really export are the puppets whenever we are at international festivals”. And without simplifying or standardising, “our marionettes are purely
and legitimately Galician,” says Kukas. “We are exporting
value. It seems to me that this globalization business aims at
destroying all cultures, and I reject this, so just as we bring
the Vietnamese here, I want to be taken there as a Galician,
not through being globalised”.
Kukas and Isabel came to the field of puppets in order to fill a
cultural gap they detected in Galicia, somewhat by chance.
“It was the inertia of the fact that there were no marionettes in
Galicia and this carried out a function and people started calling for us from everywhere” and, as Kukas points out, “and
then we realized we were immersed in this world”. Why?
Because in the puppets they discovered the
activity that complemented their interests:
plastic arts, literature, poetry and music. “Thirty years ago no one called
Now, with a vast career, involving over forty
them puppets, and now people
shows, after collaborations from such as the
Galician Royal Philharmonic, they only talk even correct us when we call them
about satisfaction and effort when they look
back and do not forget that there is still a marionettes”
great deal to be invented.
Set for the TV programme TVG Xabarín Club, at the model stage, during construction and when finished.
17
“My process is to think for a long time until
I see everything really clearly”
In the thirty years that
Kukas and Isabel have
been working with puppets, although the production
of shows is their most popular
activity, their workshop has always been another fundamental
aspect of the company.
Is the marionette workshop one
of the ways of making this business
profitable?
ISABEL: Of course. There are seasons with a lot of shows
and others without so many. And there is also a demand.
KUKAS: There are also certain jobs such as making props
and sets, or even making marionettes for other companies,
which we have also done.
I: Indeed. It is a job that makes Kukas an artist and a craftsman, doing what is required, making marionettes, props,
posters and sets … Because in fact these works are all
interrelated. We have three fundamental activities in the
company: the production of puppet shows or puppets with
actors; then the craft workshop for sets, props and papiermâché; and we have another activity to which we devote
time, which is teaching. Kukas spends a lot of time almost
exclusively giving Occupational Training course in the
Craft Centre in the Theatre Course at the University; almost
every year we give courses in making and manipulating
puppets, especially in Lugo.
This is a mixture between a handicraft component and an artistic one. How does this relationship work? Where do the two meet and separate?
K: Well I’m not really sure where the crafts end and the
art starts, or vice-versa. I see things that say “This is art”,
and I think, “Well, because you say so”, I just see a hand
that worked; it doesn’t transmit anything to me. And other
times they say, “No, this is a piece of handicraft”. But look,
working on stone like Master Mateo worked, what was
that, craftwork or art? I don’t really know where it starts
and stops.
I: A lot of the work that we do has in principle a handicraft
part, and then it has an artistic side. They are normally
unique works, made with an artistic intent.
18
K: Handicraft work is usually understood as that of producing series, and so we don’t ever do that. Each work is
unique. But the person who makes individual works is also
a craftsmen. At best craftwork is a type of art that can more
easily become accessible to the people, and art is something that only capitalists and millionaires can achieve. I
don’t know the difference.
I: Crafts also have a more practical, useful aspect.
K: But if it doesn’t have a functional element, I don’t know
up to what point craftwork is not art, such as in the case of
a decorative plate. In Galicia there was a time when there
were some fantastic ceramicists, and there still are, and I
always wondered why this wasn’t art, because I adored
that type of craft work, it was so interesting. And if the
craftsman is the creator … I think Galician craftwork is
very creative. What impresses everyone outside of Galicia
is that it is so creative.
The last show, Untitled 4x8x6, portrayed the
process of the artistic creation of the puppets. In
it the drawings leap out of the paper into reality
through a magical trance. The real process will
be somewhat different...
K: I don’t know how other artists do things. I know how I
do it. There are creators who start out by scribbling on the
floor and look at the scribbles, to see what they discover.
I have a process that involves spending a long time thinking, getting up early, going over things in my head until I
see things clearly. When I see them clearly I draw them on
paper. I have to see them very clearly. The process of thinking takes me a long time, and doing it takes a short time.
Other artists or craftsmen start modelling the clay as if the
work might tell them what is inside it. But when I make the
clay I’ve already seen what’s inside it. My process is more
of a mental one, of going round in my head first.
And then is it easy to reach the aim?
K: Very easy. Then it’s a matter of technique, like writing.
These are craft techniques, whether it is painting or sculpting, nothing odd. What you have to learn is the language,
the process. Then the creative force depends on each person. No one teaches that at any school.
Types of puppets
Rod Puppet
The movement of the puppet’s limbs is made using
rods.
“Research has
always been present
in our marionettes,
firstly because we
are self-taught, and
then due to a need,
like a vice”
Glove Puppet
Manipulated by hand inside it.
Marotte
The puppet’s hand are replaced by those of the
puppeteer.
String Marionette
Manipulated through strings attached to a crosspiece.
Finger Puppet
Small heads set on the finger like a thimble.
Flat Puppet
Usually flat wooden or card figures moved from
below with rods.
Direct Hand Puppet
The puppet is manipulated in full view of the spectators.
Chinese Shadows
A silhouette of the moving figures is projected.
Pedestal Puppet
These have a rod on their upper part and a wooden
support like a pedestal below.
Marcelino de Santiago (Kukas) and Isabel Rei
founded Kukas’s Puppets in 1979.
They devote themselves to designing and making puppets, masks, big ugly head dolls, props
and stage sets, posters and programmes.
Kukas produccións artísticas S.L.
Lino Villafínez, 11 –1º D
15704 Santiago de Compostela
TN/fax: 981 562 734
609 884 630 / 660 298 070
www.kukas.biocultural.net
monicreques@mundo-r.com
monicreques@hotmail.com
They have produced around forty puppet shows
and regularly give courses in countries such as
Portugal, Brazil and Greece.
19
20
Between Wicker and
Mego Baskets
Carlos discovered a different form of life on a trip to the Antilles, where he went for three
months and ended up staying for a year and a half. There he learned how to make objects
from what nature gave him, something which fascinated him and led him to leave his job
as an administrator in an office. A bold step about which he is totally satisfied today and
which he guarantees he would repeat, speaking from the paradisiacal place where he has
set up his workshop: the heart of Caurel. A place that gives him raw material and knowledge, as this is where he met basket-makers who introduced him to popular basket-weaving and allowed him to discover a whole tradition. And since then he has fought to gain
recognition for this work and for its permanence in time.
Almost a year ago Carliños, as he is known, came to Seoane do Caurel, a village in the heart of this spectacular mountain range, where he has a place where he dries and beats willow and wicker to make baskets.
What is certain is that his neighbours cannot understand why this 43 year-old man left his job in an office and
changed his life in Santa María de Oia (Pontevedra) for a village in which they say there is no work. His decision came about on a visit to a friend from central Spain, Sánchez, who is also a craftsman who had become
attached to this area, from which Carlos also hasn’t managed to leave. “People say to
us: Sánchez stays here, who is clearly crazy, and so do you. Everyone else goes away”,
In the picture, the third basket
Carlos González states.
hanging up is a mego, a traditional
basket from Caurel that used to
But in exchange Caurel brings a great deal to this basket-maker. “I was walking along
be used in farming tasks, like
and I was amazed, looking at the hedges I could see branches of hazel, willow, cherry
gathering chestnuts.
and chestnut... This is a world of local vegetable life! And as the wind blows a lot from
the north on the coast, we decided to move here”, jokes Carlos. His involvement in making baskets is curious to say the least. In his family, despite it being popular among us, there was no one who
made baskets. The only aspect that handicraft occupied in his life was the gourds, out of which he made – and
still makes – lamps and other decorative objects.
Shortly before coming to Caurel he went on a trip to the Caribbean, to the Antilles, to visit a friend of his who
made all sorts of objects from what he found on the beaches, such as coconuts. He then understood the versatility wood offered and decided that this would be his profession. “The plane landed and on Monday I went to
the street of the basket-makers in and asked them if they could teach me how to make baskets, and they told me
about the Basket-making School”, a course that is given through the Vigo Centre for Traditional Crafts. There he
learned the three traditional techniques: wicker, thatch and wood; and which became the starting point for the
great deal that he still had to learn in this craft.
“I devote myself totally to this. I collect wicker wherever I go. If I come across a new plant I bring it back and
plant it”, he explains. He works mainly in twig baskets: “I’m better at working with wicker, because it is easier
to go down to the river and pick some willow shoots, some hazel or chestnut twigs and make a basket, than to
plant rye [for thatched baskets] and then scythe it by hand”. Besides, it is also a question of profitability, given
that a wooden piece takes much longer than one made of twigs, and is much more difficult to sell.
The question of living from basket-making is a little more complicated, even impossible according to Carlos.
“The basket-makers that are working as such are connected to the Vigo or Lugo Crafts Centres”, he says. He
points out that these craftsmen usually complete their income with other related activities: giving short courses
in basket-making, holding exhibitions at craft fairs and medieval markets or through talks and demonstrations.
21
Traditional basketry
There are three specialties in traditional basketry: wicker, thatch and wood.
Wicker basket work is also known as twig basket work, given that one can use other
types of flexible twig bushes such as willow, gorse, genista, cytisus, myrtle, hazel or
elm. These twigs are woven with different techniques and are made into different forms
depending on their use. Stripped wicker corresponds to urban basketry, while wicker
with skin is for rural uses.
In thatch or rye straw basketry one rolls a sheaf into the shape of a spiral, tied up with
a strip from another plant. They are very tightly woven baskets, so they were ideal for
the carrying seeds, grain and even flour.
The basket-maker has to manipulate the split or sliced wood, getting the blades from
the trunks of chestnuts, willows or oaks. In intertwining these strips one can above all
make the patelas, elongated and shallow baskets used particularly for carrying fish.
22
“For me selling is a contribution, you go to
a fair to work and you charge for a demonstration, if you sell ten or fifteen items you
make 200 euros extra”. On the other hand,
he adds an interesting fact, particularly for
nowadays: “Fortunately, it is the only work
for which I’ve never had to send a CV.
There are five or six of us basket-makers, so
people have to worry about finding us”.
Divulging the craft is one of the most important parts of his work, as for Carlos it is crucial for everything about traditional basket
work not to be lost, ranging from the technique to the popular songs. To this end he is
very gratified by the work he does in schools
in order to teach the young children that it
is possible to take advantage of the nature
that surrounds us, that there are things that
can be made useful just using our hands.
“There are children in the cities who think
that eggs come from the supermarket and
not from hens. So they are amazed when
they see that a bunch of twigs can be made
into a basket in two hours”. And even more
when he shows them what raincoats used to
be like in the past, putting a crown of rushes
on, that made them look like some fantastic
creature. Or when he teaches them to make
wooden blades from a piece of buckthorn,
or “saguvín”, as they call it in Caurel, and
they see how it is possible to do this without
electric tools, just with a few utensils and
one’s hands.
Conserving the Craft
“The important thing for me is to maintain
the skill to make all these works, as each one
is very specific in the way of making it, of
meshing it”, and that can only be achieved
with experience and learning from the old
basket-makers. He goes to live exhibitions
with many of them, which they continue to
go to even though they have been retired
for years, like one basket-maker from Mondariz. He feels respected and like by them,
even though they do not understand why he
left the life he had in order to devote himself
to a craft that has a difficult future. “They
tell me ‘You are crazy, this hasn’t got any
future’, but on the other hand they carry on
making demonstrations. That’s
“If the old basketbecause
they
want to teach, makers carry on making
because they are
proud of their demonstrations it is because
craft,
because
they are proud of their craft”
they lived off it
and lived well”.
At the exhibitions there is also a lot of interaction with the public and the result is
always enriching. It is very common for
there to be someone who boasts that they
can make baskets, given that most people
always had a basket-maker in the family
or neighbours that they had seen making
them. But the people who really know how
to make them see things differently, “you always go to the back, or to the sides, that is
when you see the true craftsmen”. In these
cases Carlos asks them what baskets they
make, what technique they use and what
are they for, given that each area has styles
of its own.
23
24
“For me it is important
to maintain the skill of
making different baskets,
given that each one has a
very different technique”
“This is going well”, says Antonio, a neighbour who comes to see him along with his
daughter Lucía, examining the basket that Carlos is making. He was also the first person
to be interested in Carlos’s work, he remembers. “Antonio came here with the first snowfall, saw me with some wicker and said ‘come along, I’m going to teach you how to make
a mego-basket from here, from Caurel’, and we went into the bar, because it was very
cold here”. He’s not the only one. Another neighbour, also called Antonio, stopped to see
his work. “If you want how to do different things, when you want come to my house and
I’ll teach you”. This is very stimulating for Carlos, because he enjoys not just making different creations, but he is also motivated to conserve the popular basketry tradition. And
this, as he says, is priceless.
Indeed, there were a lot of people who knew how to make baskets, each according to the
traditional manner in their area, but almost no one did this as a job. They used to make
baskets just to use at home, and not to sell. It was an activity that went with other ones, like
animal husbandry, a way of passing the time while one looked after the cattle. Only the
basket-makers from Mondariz considered basket-making to be their profession, working
particularly in wood, and going from house to house making baskets.
A Hobby
Antonio didn’t like going off to look after the cows when he was a boy. It was very boring.
A neighbour told him, “You have to learn to do something”, and taught him how to make
the mego-baskets, which are local to the Caurel area. “He helped me make the baskets,
I got the hang of it and then I used to like going with the cows”, and he recalls what his
mother used to say: “A strange case. Before he would go with the cows and would always
come back early. Now we almost have to go and get him from the meadow”. Because it
was the right time to make the mego basket. But the best ones, to compensate for being
late, were always for his mother, who used them for clothes or for potatoes. He also used
to give them to his friends and his neighbours would order some from him, although he
never charged. “This selling business isn’t worth it”, and Carlos laughs as he listens to
him. “One does this out of love for the art, otherwise how much would the basket have to
be worth”. He spends about an hour, whenever he has the wicker ready, or the “brimias”
as they call them in this region. Now his plantation is overgrown, completely abandoned,
because he hasn’t made a basket for years.
Lucía, Antonio’s daughter, doesn’t know how to make baskets yet, but she wants her father
to teach her. “She’s hasn’t got the strength to tighten the wicker”, he says, although she
has already tried to make a base. But the young girl, who is nine, can already recognize
the trees around her and the rhythms of nature. She knows that in the spring the chestnut
tree produces a good bark with which to make a horn. And she has the baskets her father
made for her to learn around the house. Like the first basket he gave to his girlfriend at the
time, now Lucía’s mother. Without knowing it, she is entrusted with conserving the tradition of the Caurel mego baskets.
A Space of his own
Carlos now finds himself in a process of being professionally linked
to a place, of having a differentiated space. His project brings his
work as a basket-maker into relation with the exhibiting of a large
collection of original works that
he has compiled over the years
thanks to the master basket-makers. His aim is to create an overall
centre, in which he can plant all
the raw materials he needs (wickers, willows, chestnuts, hazels),
and where he can receive guided
tours from schools and clubs and
where he can also teach this craft.
A way of granting his profession
with greater stability, as well as
dignifying and divulging a craft
that has such an important presence in Galician tradition.
Carlos González Martínez
Seoane do Courel
TN: 650 857 815
cesteiro2009@hotmail.com
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26
“Our work used to be
considered as a complement of
the men’s work”
Nets, the Invisible Work
The making and repairing of nets was work that was not recognised as such for a long time. Over recent years a
lot of work has been carried out to dignify this craft, which in most cases was in the underground economy with
extremely low wages. In this sense a vitally important role was played by the vindications of the net-makers themselves, as most of the net-makers are women.
Ángeles Millé is a net-maker, president of the O Fieital Association, in Malpica, and is also the secretary of the “O
Peirao” Federation of Craft Net-makers, a group thanks to which her voice is heard louder and in many other places.
And she brings us to this craft, in a struggle half way between labour recognition and the feminine.
At what time does the day start for a net-maker?
We start at seven in the morning and, depending on the work we
have, we don’t stop until eight or nine. And as we are autonomous,
we also divide domestic work with this work. We don’t have a fixed
timetable, and when there is a big workload we sometimes go on
until ten at night. It’s something we have in common with other autonomous workers.
How did the Federation of Craft Net-makers come
about?
The association was formed after several meetings with the Fisheries
Commission. One could see that there was a craft that was being
lost and that was remaining anonymous. One didn’t see it. People
started to come together from all the ports in Galicia, and they
found that there were people with many common concerns. The associations started to be formed in 2002, and after the catastrophe
of the Prestige oil spill we agreed to form a federation that would
exist for all the ports in Galicia.
How did the Prestige disaster give an impulse to the
net-makers’ union?
Until that moment we didn’t have any contacts among us. Many
people worked on the ships and others did the work at home, and
as a consequence of Prestige, we started to get to know each other.
We needed to be heard, because after the sinking of the Prestige
we wanted to earn, like everyone, because we were registered and
paying contributions.
Did it affect you in the same way as the fishermen?
Ours was a sector that was hit badly and is still being affected by
the other problems in the fishing sector. When there is a shutdown,
if you are working on an art you have to stop working. Sometimes
you can do some other art, but on other occasions you can’t, because you don’t have access to it or it doesn’t exist where you live.
In these cases you just watch things come and we carry on without
counting on help.
What has been the Net-makers’ Federation’s main struggle since its creation?
Since the beginning we have struggled to get our professional dignity recognized, because as women we are marginalised. Our work
is recognised as a complement. It is like the man is the one who
brings the money home and you help him doing this. But it isn’t like
that.
At the moment, the Federation has been looking at professional
illnesses so that we don’t get told when we get an illness that it is
a common disease. Cervical pains, arthritis, tendonitis or carpal
tunnel syndrome, which affects one’s wrist, are consequences of
the repetitive movements and the postures we have while working.
Tiredness is normal in all jobs, but there are forms of tiredness that
lead to illness, and that is what affects net-makers most.
The work of the net-makers has traditionally been seen
as a complement to the work of the fisherman, and for
this reason they worked irregularly, without registering
as autonomous workers. Is it still like that?
Unfortunately that still happens. It is the underground economy that is
provoked by the chandlers and by the intermediaries. It is something
27
we have been denouncing in the O
Peirao Federation and through the
associations themselves, because
this is very harmful to us in many
ways. On the one hand you have
no work, because they only give
you work when the others have
too much. When there is no one
to turn to they decide to come
to us who are legalised. Most of
the time this is what happens, because it is much easier for the intermediary to take the work to a house where,
besides the woman, the children work or
other people who work with them.
What percentage of people who devote themselves to
making and repairing nets work in an irregular manner?
According to a study made by the Industry Commission a year ago,
in Galicia there are over two thousand people doing this work,
but registered is only seven hundred are registered. That means
we have sixty-five percent infiltrations. We are mainly talking about
pensioners, but a person who is seventy or eighty finds it difficult
to work. There are fishermen who retire before reaching sixty and
decide to play cards in the afternoon and spend the morning working on the nets. The fishermen have a lot of experience and can help
the net-makers, guiding them in their work, but they are working
against us, competing with us. We had the opportunity to travel to
the Basque Country, where we met other net-makers from the whole
of the Cantabrian coast. We saw that they needed the help of the
retired people, people with experience, and when they need them
they called them and they were there.
Why does precisely the opposite happen in Galicia?
The ports most affected by this situation in Galicia are Guarda,
Malpica and Ribeira. It is precisely where the chandlers are, who
give work to the intermediaries. The latter prefer to give the work
out to the houses, rather than to the professionals, whereas in the
other areas, where they work directly with the ship owners, illegal
labour doesn’t exist.
Is your salary suited to the work you do?
What isn’t normal is that we have a day’s work of eight, twelve or
thirteen hours in order to earn a salary that is below the minimum
wage. Now we are trying to unify the salaries in the different ports
in Galicia. The work is the same in the different areas, but the payment varies from place to place.
How did you start working on the nets?
I did a lot of different things before I became a net-maker. I studied
until I was nineteen. I took a course in administration, but I preferred
to devote myself to my house. When I saw that the children were
twelve or thirteen and could look after themselves I started working
in agriculture, and one day, by chance, an intermediary offered
me a job working on repairing nets. I started doing it and liked it,
but I never imagined financial independence. No matter how little
you earn you see that you are contributing towards the house and
28
that made me feel good. At the end I decided to leave agriculture
and I decided to get into this on a professional level. Fourteen years
ago.
Is there enough work for the net-makers?
There is a great deal of work. The problem is that it is badly divided
up. If they improved the conditions and we had a worthy salary that
paid well for the day’s work then young people would get involved
in this. I’m involved in teaching this to young people so they can
work, but with a salary that allows them to live. The ones we are
making now are in order to keep up our contributions, because at
our age, between forty and fifty, there isn’t much more to turn to.
In order to improve your situation you first have to get
your work to stop being anonymous. Is the Federation
working towards obtaining this recognition?
We are managing the professional qualification of the net-makers,
we are demanding that our work be recognised. In order to register
you need a diploma, and that contributes towards people not doing
it underground, because training is very important. The Fisheries
Commission manages the courses through local guild associations,
which is what we know, but we net-makers don’t belong to these
guilds, which are only for fishermen and people who extract things
from the sea. That isn’t our case, because our work is only that
of making or maintaining the nets. We are independent from the
guilds.
It also depends on the Administration to obtain professional recognition.
Yes. We achieved something from the Vice Presidency, which this
year brought out the Arlinga programme. This accepts the net-makers, but can’t go any further, because the Vice Presidency has no
authority over the sea. In the Fisheries Commission, in training, we
have a hundred percent, but we still have to solve the problem of
unregistered workers.
What can you do to end unfair competition?
That’s in the hands of the Work Commission. They intend to do
something, and they are seeing whether the Treasury Office can
do something to get the underground economy up on the surface.
They have to control it; there have to be receipts to prove where the
boats get the material and who did the work. The situation is that
we are a very pacific group and here everything works on the basis
of struggle and war. Once we called a demonstration and after two
days we had an inspection in the ports. If we don’t do anything no
one pays us any attention, and I believe that it’s also because we
are women.
The Indispensable Hand
Is there any industrial alternative to hand-made nets?
It has been tried, but manual work always has to be there. It also
depends on the nets. In the case of the frame in the past it was all
done with hemp and cotton string. Now these arrive and what the
net-maker does is to put them together or repair them. In the smaller
nets one used to work with the same strings and the women repaired the nets, but now they come ready made. Our work consists
of linking them, tying one piece to another. In the case of the long
line nets they tried to use a machine to make the knots in the net, but they were always
slipping and coming loose when they went into the sea. The only thing to do was to go
back to manual labour. Up to now no one’s invented a machine that can do our job.
What fishing nets do you work with?
They are different in the north and south of Galicia. In Malpica we have trawling nets,
that the men usually work with, as they are very heavy. Then there are the ring frame, the
smaller nets and the long line ones.
Let’s take this in parts; what is a trawler net like?
“There are over
2,000 people
working as netmakers, but
only 700 are
registered”
It is a large size net. It is based on a bag that is dragged along the sea bed and is closed
when the fish is inside.
You said that the trawler nets are mainly used by the men. What are the
ones you work on most?
I work on the smaller one and the long line nets.
What is a long line net?
It is a selective net. We can distinguish between a deep long line net, a surface one and
short one. Each of them is made up of a “mother line” on which the hooks are hung, and
each one catches a fish. It is a smaller fish than in the trawler net, which captures all the
fish together and it reaches the boat all crushed up. When they get to the fish auction the
long line fish are of better quality and fetch a better price. They also require a lot of work
from the net-makers. I think that within five years I will have to stop this job. You have to
Asociación de Redeiras O Fieital
Muelle Norte, 50
15113 Malpica
A Coruña
TN: 618 311 798
29
stand up and do the same repetitive movements, and when one gets
to fifty we go on to the smaller nets.
Is the business going to do well in the future or will it
tail off?
What are the smaller nets?
It’s not going to be lost because it is a craft. Until they invent machines
to replace us, and maybe they will, handwork will be necessary.
They are nets made of cloths that are tied to a rope and that are
mainly used in shallow water fishing. They used to get repaired
when they came back from the sea damaged, but now the quickest
and most economical thing to do is to take the cloths of and tie some
new ones on. You save a lot of time. Before you used to spend the
whole day repairing the mesh and now you can change several in
one day.
What materials do you use to make the nets?
Depending on the thickness of the mesh you use one string or another. Those that are for Gran Sol have plastic strings that can be used
and taken off. When it is to tie up (to attach the cloths to a rope) you
can’t use these strings because they slip, being plastic. Mostly we
work with synthetic materials, but we still use cotton for the long line
threads because we need them to keep really tight.
Has there been an evolution in the materials over recent
years?
They’ve been modified, but the net is still the same. The materials
are more accessible and more resistant, but the manual work is
still the same. The mesh has to be treated in the same way with the
same steps.
You have had the chance to exchange knowledge with
other net-makers in the Basque Country. Are the nets
made in the same way here in Galicia as in the rest of
the Cantabrian cornice?
It’s the same. Indeed, we make a lot of long line nets here for the
Basque Country. The intermediaries and the chandlers give us a lot
of commissions for work for abroad, as Galicia is the place where
we make more nets. We work for the Basque Country and Asturias,
but also for France, Argentina and Chile...
Can there be nets without net-makers?
The fishermen also work with the nets on the boats, and when the
bad weather comes there is no work for us but just for them. Those
who work in shallow water fishing, when they have to stay on land,
occupy themselves repairing the nets, and so they save money. If
they have to go to sea next day they need to rest and so then we
have more work. In the case of the fishermen who go to Gran Sol,
who take at best two thousand nets on each ship, they give us the
work to do over a fortnight and we have to work all the hours possible. When they have less quantity they themselves repair the nets.
How important is it for you to hold live exhibitions, like
you did at the MOA?
Many people leave this when they can’t make a living, and now
we are going to diversify our activity. Just like we showed our work
at the MOA, we want to go to schools to teach our work to young
people, because we believe that it also good for the young people
to know it. What we do is a part of Galician culture, and was
somewhere in the background without anyone realizing that these
women were here doing this work. The important thing is not only
what you are earning, it is what you can transmit to people who are
interested in your work at events like the MOA. There were groups
of people who wanted me to explain what we did to them. When
we eat fish we don’t ask where it came from and we don’t know
what the nets are like, or how they are used. Even older people are
surprised by what we explain to them. It is important for the world
of the sea to be present in these fairs, and we thank the MOA for
thinking of us.
Your movement has a good deal of feminist complaint...
The situation has evolved, and the women themselves have achieved
many rights for which we had to fight, but we still have a lot to do.
It is like men have to bring the money home and that we do, if we
can do so, it’s even better, but the fact is that work is there for men.
Fortunately this is changing. Women are getting on to the labour
market, and our professional labour has to be recognised.
Were you able to convince them that in the small fishing
villages there is work for them?
Of course there is work! Indeed there is someone who does it. What
is not normal is that there is so little work officially registered in bills
to the Treasury if there is so much work going on. The underground
economy has to come to the surface sometime.
Are you managing to get young people into your activity?
Young people are needed, like in all jobs, because we have the
experience, but young people have a great deal to offer. When you
pass things on to other people you see things that you have missed
because you are fed up of doing the same work all the time. Young
people bring you freshness, they liven you up, and that is necessary.
30
31
www.moagalicia.org
promocion.artesania@xunta.es
TN: 881 999 173
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Belategui Regueiro
Lugar de Outeiro, 15. Cambre / TN: 981 674 557
33
Encaixes Mónica
Dor 92. Ponte do Porto / TN: 981 730 460
34
Olería de Gundivós
Concello de Sober
35
Tejidos vegetales
Hortas 7, Cela. Outeiro de Rei / TN: 982 390 666
36
Pendant: Mayer Joyeros [necklace: A mouga]
Espasande 2, Luou.Teo / TN: 981 893 094
37
Sedanía
Órbigo 14, 3A, Virgen del Camino. León / TN: 987 300 805
38
Marion Geissbühler
Von Tavelweg Konolfingen. Switzerland / TN: +0041 317 910 322
39
José Spaniol
40
Brazil
www.josespaniol.com
Chonín Ruesga Navarro
Orégano 5, Palomares del Río. Seville / TN: 955 763 261
41
“The MOA has been set up in a setting
of the most original creative diversity”
Aure Chardon
Specialised Press, Grupo Dúplex
www.grupoduplex.com
We believe
it is very
important to
participate in
this role as
a promoter
of “Made in
Galicia”
Quality. What stands out is the quality of those
who are here to display and the products on
show, both due to its excellence on the artistic
and craftwork levels. With reference to the jewellery sector – a field in which the Grupo Dúplex is
a specialist with over thirty years of experience
at the forefront of the specialized press – we are
highlighting the great participation of this productive segment that is so important in Galicia, with
consecrated names such as Óscar Rodríguez,
Ardentia, Fink Orfebres or A Feitura, among others. In these cases we are talking not only about
recognition of the handicraft aspect, but also the
productive capacity, facts that are demonstrated
as these companies grow throughout their professional course.
Creative Diversity. Jewels, objects for the
home and for decoration, ceramics, bags, musical instruments... The MOA was started in a
true setting of the most original creative diversity, not only within our borders. The existence
of an invited country, Switzerland in this first edition, contributes towards enriching the range of
suggestions for the customer, providing a very
interesting multicultural dialogue both for the exhibiter and the visitor.
Supply. From the most attainable to the most
exclusive item. At the MOA there was room for
all price levels, so that the visitor could in fact
42
find everything all together. Fortunately the originality was in the product and not in its cost.
Image. We particularly call attention to the
choice of the colour orange (a dynamic and active colour) and the single aisle concept, which
grant a very pleasant touch to the showing. At the
same time visitors to the MOA could enjoy some
services and a programme of events designed
for their total comfort and satisfaction (restaurant
area, a choice of evening shows, etc.).
Made in Galicia. With the MOA we are not
just talking about the good event called upon
to be consecrated as a setting for the protection of the craft and of its product. We believe
that it is very interesting to focus on its role as
a promoter of what is “made in Galicia”, stimulating collaboration among the several different
sectors involved and the institutions towards the
divulging of traditional Galician craftwork and
its cultural heritage on the national and international level.
Pioneering Initiative. In Spain there are
few, or we can almost say hardly any examples like that oft he MOA. For this reason its
pioneer nature, its vocation for the future and its
relevance as an element that promotes added
value inherent to work by individual authors is
undoubtable.
Opinion
What do the rumours say?
David Barro
Art Critic and Exhibition Curator
The challenge was difficult: to set up an innovating and pioneering fair in Galicia in order to put our crafts
on an international perspective. There will be those who didn’t understand, who haven’t travelled and
seen how these things take time and effort, who believe that the costs don’t justify the result. But the fact
goes far beyond what one can see over three days, and the promoting of our handicrafts will remain in
the memory of those who only heard of it, of those who were only aware of that reality when they saw the
advertising, of those who had the opportunity to look at the catalogue, of those who were able to enjoy
the promotional videos, of those who delve into the memory-book published days after the fair or of those
who are reading this magazine.
There is no lack of ideas in Galicia, but there is a lack of connections, intermediate spaces, bridging
places for the up and coming elements of our craftwork can develop, for us all to become aware of its
universal character and of its existence beyond the topics. On many occasions we have spoken about the
periphery and about our position, more than due to the physical situation, this concept comes about because of budget restrictions and efforts that haven’t been carried out. Galician culture and our handicrafts
have abused of an imaginary that insisted on their exclusively rural origins, and in that sense it is necessary for it to acknowledge itself also as being avant-garde, with neither reticence nor prejudgments. And
this was possible at the MOA, in the quality of its exhibitors and their products, in the modernization of
their image, in the diversity of the proposals, in its condition as a meeting point and as a place to develop
and grow. The effort was great and was important, although certainly not enough, because it is urgent to
carry on, to go forward on the path of the normalization and internationalization of the handicrafts sector
as has been achieved in other sectors.
For those who now the universe of fairs, managing to get eighty one exhibitors is something exceptional.
As is the quality of some of the craft workers and artists who participated in the exhibition. In the Gallery
the aim was to expand the concept of craftwork, precisely seeking out the less commercial products and a
confrontation between Galician handicraft and contemporary international handicraft. Thus there was the
setting up and presenting of the works assuming the unusable area of the space for a series of performances that granted life and movement to the exhibition. We were thus able to move through the images
and empower the idea of a parallel “event” in order to give primacy to surprise and to explore that place
as a craftwork space in which anything might happen. Important craft items, some of a monumental size,
surrounded a meeting point or a leisure area presided over by a radio programme that granted a voice
to the true protagonists of the fair, the exhibitors and guests. Always starting from one premise: to connect
the country and comprehend that which Tolstoy stated: “paint your village and you will be universal”.
43
Switzerland at the MOA
Peter Fink
Exhibitor (Switzerland)
Potsfink
Route du Petit Epenedes 3
Epenedes-Fribourg. Switzerland
www.potsfink.ch
info@potsfink.ch
MOA is the foremost professional
event for those who work in the
craft and design sectors. This
is the best place for creating
new collaboration and business
networks:
Expocoruña covers 7,500 m2.
1,200 accredited professional
visitors.
A hundred exhibitors bring quality,
design and innovation.
High quality international guests.
The exhibition was accompanied
by concerts, artistic performances
and other cultural events.
The MOA showing has been
planned to be an annual event,
and is organized by the Galician
Foundation for Handicraft and
Design, with the aim of becoming a
permanent fixture in this field.
44
They walked the path. The authentic one, the
one that leads us right into the heart of each
one of us, which might change a man. An
eternal seeking, that path. Nineteen years
later on I am off again, but this time I am
in the company of fellow craft workers, and
the path does not take us to the cathedral of
Santiago de Compostela but rather to» Expocoruña, the burgeoning new exhibition centre that has been set up in La Corunna. This
time our professional activities are our centre
of interest. We are all professional handicraft
creators. Sharing our know-how, exchanging ideas with our colleagues from Galicia,
discovering another market far away from us
and, besides this, receiving commissions.
From my house in Lausanne I took 72 days to
reach the hill that dominates the city; this time
we could do with a few hours before leaving
our bags in the hotel on the other side of the
street that separated us from the exhibition
site. Preparation for the whole journey is very
important: the phase of uncertainty, dreams,
technical preparation. I was in charge of
forming a group of Swiss quality craft workers, mixing up many different styles, but balanced and representative. I couldn’t have
dreamt of anything better, despite the tight
time schedule, an unknown fair and several
aspects that needed clarifying.
In a click, and after some returned correspondence, the technologies allow me to
contact hundreds of Swiss craft workers who
are potentially interested in the project. The
number of replies was considerable: not one,
not two, twenty-five enrolments were those
that came together and proposed themselves
for consideration by the Foundation. And a
group of ten craft workers is chosen. Later one
person withdrew and was replaced; another
one was eliminated when it was discovered
that they produced everything in Asia, and
yet another was unable to keep to this commitment. Others presented themselves, but
after the time period allowed. So then there
were eight of us craft workers from different
areas. The textile section, despite being very
strong in Switzerland, was absent. A shame.
Then comes the trip itself. The time of action,
but also of suffering and fun. In the time of
the journey on foot I would put my walking
boots on, put my rucksack on my back, have
my maps handy and the direction clear. The
first kilometre would start and there were two
thousand more left. This year was the same.
Collaboration and communication with the
organisation are extraordinary; everything
works perfectly. On arriving, our works are
already there, the stands ready, and we
place our objects on them. The translator introduces herself; Cristina will always be there
to help us! We visit the exhibition in the assembly phase. Will there really be a crowd of
people tomorrow? The three days that it lasts
are a hurricane, the press is there, we make
contacts, and we compare and share our
knowledge. Exhibitions, music, dance and
gastronomical pleasures. After the fair travel
around the country, presenting our work and
training interested young people. Another
strong point for us in relation to feeling the
history of Galicia was unforgettable – seeing
some craft workers from Sargadelos in their
workshops.
Return from a pilgrimage has a bitter taste.
One has to go back to real life and get
back to work as if nothing had happened.
Yet these 72 hours in nature with only my
essential needs had a deep effect on me.
Returning from the MOA, as such, leaves us
overwhelmed by the innovation and boldness
on the part of the organisation to propose
exhibitions, concerts and other cultural events
within a commercial fair. We didn’t expect
this. On our side we kept to our mission: to
enrich and diversify the MOA, showing what
is done – very differently – far from Galicia.
Back in Switzerland I get messages from craft
workers: they tell me about the coming year.
A new Swiss group calmly takes shape. The
MOA has become visible beyond Galicia,
the path is fertile and the generosity of Finisterra has ended. But there is still more ambition, to do things clearer, better and much
better, and that is the way forward, the only
way forward. The true craft worker will always follow it.
Opinion
“The MOA is important
as a meeting point
between products and
tradespersons”
Luís Santín
Exhibitor (Artesanía de Galicia)
Luís Santín has been a professional leather craft worker for twenty-seven years in
his Santín workshop in Cambre. A period during which his distribution strategies
have changed as his workshop became consolidated and his products were settled
on the market. For this reason Santín is convinced that trade fairs like the MOA
are fundamental to stimulate and facilitate relationships between tradespersons and
craft workers. “I went from selling in the street to going to international trade fairs
like I do now”, Santín explains. “Professional trade fairs by sectors are necessary,
because these are the contexts in which we can sell to shops”, and in this sense the
international vocation is crucial, not only due to sales, but also to grant visibility to
Galician handicrafts. “If we are not there, like on the Internet, we do not exist”, he
argues.
“For me the MOA is indispensable, but it is important not to make a political war out
of it”, given that, according to Santín, the MOA has been set up as a commercial
and professional meeting point, and should therefore be consolidated as an annual
event in this sector. “The name ‘MOA’ itself is a heritage, one which will increase
with every passing year and that can’t be taken away”.
In addition to this, he thinks that it is necessary to change the manner of assessing
the succession and the repercussions of this type of event. “In Galicia my products
are in more than 160 shops, and I have a distribution firm. So it is these trade fairs
like the MOA where people meet Santín and Santín gets to know the shops, and
that is very important”, he states. “That meeting means a verbalising of the objects,
setting my products against what people think. The MOA allows us to find some
contact with reality, which means the shops, giving us very important information”,
he assures.
Santín
Urb. Camiño, 31. Sigrás
Cambre
www.santincuero.com
luis@santincuero.com
So the results of a trade fair should never exclusively be the sum of the orders at the
end of the meeting, but rather the relationships and the contacts that are established
during these events have a value that is as much or more important than direct sales,
as is shown by this workshop specialized in leather work. “Analysing the value just
through the orders is a mistake”, he guarantees. “The fair is important in the sense
that it proposes a meeting point between the products and the traders”. Indeed, after
having been at the MOA he is receiving more orders from the contacts he made
there: “The fairs are a space of contact and opening”, he concludes.
This does not mean that there has to be a deep analysis of the results of the MOA
from several different points of view through discussion among the different sectors
involved in order to improve the coming editions yet granting primacy to the permanence of the event: “If the fair doesn’t happen we will no longer have a referent for
the situation of Galician crafts”.
45
Replying to the proposal by the Galician Centre of Crafts and Design Foundation, I attended the MOA, the first Exhibition of Galician Crafts, which
was held in La Corunna in February 2009. The fair was created with the
focus that many of the craft workers dedicated to trade with shops, galleries and large-scale sales establishments have been calling for over recent
years.
Eighty-five craft workers accepted the challenge, although almost all of
us knew that this was a bold step, without doubt those of us who traded
through other professionals demanded and needed an event in which we
could reach our potential customer in a clear manner without being mixed
up with other products that had nothing to do with the type of public that
deals with handicraft works.
Susana Aparicio Ortiz
Carrer Perill nº41 bajo
Barcelona
sussanglass@hotmail.com
“In my personal
experience, the
MOA should
continue”
Susana Aparicio
Exhibitor (Barcelona)
“The atmosphere was ‘sensational’. Despite the situation resulting from the
economic crisis that is affecting Europe and that is provoking the closure of a
large number of workshops throughout the state, there were few long faces,
and most of us knew how to fit into this reality that, on the other hand, we
all knew”.
The standard of the products presented by the participants was very high,
and once again demonstrated that Spain has a healthy group of serious
professionals capable of competing on any market.
The guest country at the fair was Switzerland, which impressed most of us
with its creativity and minimalism, and the Swiss craft workers took advantage of their stay to create links, to make contact with other craftspeople, to
visit workshops and to propose ideas for possible future projects.
The MOA layout had a good interior distribution of the stands, which were
very detailed, although no doubt if this layout is repeated at other events
a different type of stands would have to be considered given that some of
the participants did not find them suitable to their needs. Yet in general they
were well adapted to all the products shown.
Many visitors, companions, politicians and institutions from different Spanish cities came to see the fair.
Shop owners also came to see or to make requests from craftspeople with
whom they already worked. On Saturday afternoon and on Sunday one
could see considerable real interest among the people, with notebooks in
their hands, making notes and taking cards. What might become future
requests is a usual practice by those who have shops, and more so now that
they are selling almost day by day, as the sales in shops develop. We’ve all
been dragging our feet.
In my personal experience the MOA should be continued, but it is important
for more resources to be allocated to commercially attracting the professional visitor, given that even though the fair and the participants were of
an exceptional standard, its continuity will not be possible if there isn’t an
economic movement to justify the effort and the investment both by the craft
workers and the Galician government. The craftsman has to sell in order to
grow, in order to maintain jobs and to improve on a daily basis. This is the
aim that has to be achieved.
I believe that it is the time to make an effort if we want this model that we
have wanted for so many years to prosper, and all pull together. Spain is
one of the few countries in Europe nowadays that does not have a strong
event of this kind and which has effective results. I believe there is no shortage of will on the part of the crafts workers, associations and institutions.
We have to keep on working.
46
Opinion
For several years Rosa Segade has headed A Mouga, a shop specialising
in crafts, both traditional and more recent ones, and in which Galician craft
work occupies a privileged place. In her establishment one can find the most
varied products made by the hands of our craft workers, ranging from pottery to avant-garde jewellery, and including one of her specialties: traditional
costume. Despite having a fluid relationship with the craft workers, an event
like the Galician Craft Exhibition was an ideal place to measure the state of
production in the sector.
What idea did you have about the MOA at first?
What I expected to find was basically Galician craft workers, and then when
I got there I was surprised to see people from other places, which I also think
is a good idea. But at the MOA I expected to find Galician craft workers with
avant-garde products, that was the idea I had when I went to buy things for
my shop. I didn’t have any preconceived idea.
And did it live up to your expectations?
There was a little of everything. I already knew a lot of the craft workers, because as I am from here it is easier to get to know them than what is done in
Galician crafts. T thought the fair was excellent, very well set up. And indeed
I bought things I didn’t have.
Do you think that this MOA, the Galician Craft Exhibition, is
necessary as a meeting point between the craft worker and the
shop?
“I believe that the
MOA is the right
type of fair”
Rosa Segade
Professional Visitor
To some extent, because the small craft workers usually come to the shop
a lot. Then when they are established they logically visit fairs because they
have access to a wider public. Being a shop we have the advantage that the
smaller craft workers who make a special product usually come to the shop to
ask if we are interested in it. So until now they have been supplying us. Even
so there are always unemployed people or those who work on a very small
level. I work with all kinds of craft items, I have works from other places, but
I try to work within what I can with people from here. So it seems to me that
a fair held here and with craft workers from here provides me with a greater
quantity of attractive products, of a certain standard and of a more avantgarde character than one sees here in Galicia. That’s what I was looking for
at the MOA.
And what did you think about the standard of the works?
Generally good. Although in my case this didn’t surprise me because I already knew the work of most of the craftsmen and women. But I believe that
the people who came from abroad would find a really good level of craftwork. I discovered some firms that I really liked, and in the Swiss representation there were some special and very striking works, it was a very pretty and
imaginative craftwork. At the MOA there was a lot of choice. For example
there were plate-makers with intricate works, although we don’t work with
them in the shop. There were many craft workers who had very pretty products, well-made and of high quality.
A Mouga
Rúa Xelmírez 26
Santiago de Compostela
So you would recommend other shops to visit it?
Without any doubt. It seemed very well organised to me. One has to consider
that it was the first edition, and that these things usually improve: you realise
what was lacking in the previous edition, and people already know the fair and
turn up more. I mean that a first edition will always have fewer participants.
Would you suggest any changes?
Not really. I didn’t see anything lacking. I think it is the right type of fair.
47
Makers of Harmony
“The great artists are going back to the most
rudimentary things a priori, which means craftwork”
Abe Rábade
A tambourine with applications made of Swarovsky glass... for
whom? “The artists request it a lot, they have to stand out when they
are on stage”, according to the percussion craftsman Xosé Manuel
Sanín. And not only a question of aesthetics, but they also want a
good instrument, and the music creators agree: the best are hand
made. Although technology has been coming into the making of instruments, the craftsman’s knowledge, and above all his ear, are still
indispensable when the instruments are made. And who better to
defend this than their main users, the artists. Four of the names who
are most heard on the contemporary Galician scene: Nordestinas,
Bonovo, Nova Galega de Danza and Susana Seivane talk about
the presence of handmade crafts in their work.
“Handicraft, not only on the level of making the instruments, but
on other levels, goes alongside with music, opening up new markets being very experimental and having a good standard”. Guadi
Galego devotes his life to music, particularly traditional music, and
he knows full well the importance of the craftsman’s hand in making a musical instrument, a close and inseparable relationship, that
provokes and takes advantages of the developments in both directions. Nowadays, thanks to the time and worked being invested by
master craftsmen, the chromatic scale that a set of bagpipes has is
practically complete. And this is achieved through that will that so
often appears in an implicit and organic manner in the craftsman’s
work: that of seeking, experimenting and evolving.
Nordestinas is a project which is also given voice, besides Guadi Galego, by Ugia Pedreira, singing songs about the sea in the
rhythms of jazz, with the suggestive harmonies of Abe Rábade,
who is convinced that the pianos that make the best sounds are
made by craftsmen. “The great artists, the good ones, are curiously
going back to the most rudimentary things a priori, which means
craftwork, manual work. Among the great elite of the piano we
find those that are made by hand, the Bonendorfer, the Bechstein,
the Steinway and Sons... Even though Yamaha is the most standardized, it always has a manual part to finish off the instrument”,
48
49
because in processes like tuning the participation of the human factor is indispensable. The three members of Nordestinas agree that
it is the name of the craftsman that is the guarantee of the product.
For Galego, the musician “looks for the signature of a craftsman,
whenever he has a set of bagpipes by so-and-so or a hurdy-gurdy
by someone else, it is always different from the other one”.
Nordestinas, in their relationship with music, go beyond the purely
instrumental. The set that accompanies their concerts is made by the
craftsman sculptor Caxigueiro from Mondoñedo, a relationship that
comes from way back, when Ugía Pedreira made a soundtrack for
an exhibition by the artist. In Pedreira’s opinion the true revolution
on the instrumental musical panorama lies in the hurdy-gurdy, and
the new craftsmen, who are making and selling more. It is an instrument that is the tip of the spear in Europe”, and he quotes performers like Xermán Díaz or Óscar Fernández.
After being a member of such well-known groups as Cempés and
Bonovo, this is this latest project by one of the greatest and most
active Galician hurdy-gurdy players, Óscar Fernández, who forms
the group along with Pulpiño Viascón and Roberto Grandal. They
work under the designation electro-acoustic folk, which, more than
referring to a musical style, talks about the mediums they use. “They
are not two types of music, but this refers to the purely crafted tools
that we use, made by hand, and other electric ones”, Fernández explains. Their instruments are classic, but with names: a midi hurdy-
50
gurdy, an electro-acoustic accordion or even a musical saw. Tuning,
as they call it.
The question is that to find these instruments one has to go abroad,
because in Galicia, for example, it is a long time since anyone
made accordions by hand, Roberto Grandal points out. “Hurdygurdies, yes. What happens is that they don’t make the type that
I use”, explains Óscar Fernández, for whom the spirit of Galician
craftwork lies in its own way of conceiving and producing the music, and it is recognizable in the sound. “Indeed, we produce in a
completely crafted recording studio”, he comments, given that their
first record, Bonovo, is an example of self-management in which
they control all the processes.
And they also agree on their investigating and experimental desire,
like the curious instrument that, using friction, Pulpiño Viascón manages to get a unique and spectacular sound out of it: the saw. A
large saw that, as Roberto Grandal explains, “can just as easily cut
a tree-trunk as make a melody”.
They all share a concept and a way of creating with one of the
dance companies that is most being talked about now, even outside
of Galicia, Nova Galega de Danza, a solid and coherent initiative
that changes the usual face of this discipline in order to propose a
formula in which the most traditional element is the essence of our
contemporary condition. Their last show, Tradicción, is directed by
Xaime Díaz and Vicente Colomer, seven dancers perform it and it
has a life band with seven musicians. Their challenge was to do
something really current and new, reinventing the country’s artistic
proposals. And they manage to do this through dance and music.
Traditional rhythms that bring us updated jigs, combining modern
instruments with traditional percussion, and which explore all the
versatility that the Galician bagpipes provide today.
And for this they go on stage and dance with clogs, that traditional
style of hand-made shoe – also called “galochos” – which had a
wooden sole and a leather upper, and was tied up with strings
and was shaped like little boots. Pedro Lamas, who is the head of
musical direction for the show Tradicción, this latest one, considers
it to be “a work of handicraft”, in which this sector has an evident
presence and through the involvement of all the members of the
company.
A Family Thing
But one of the names that best reflects the link between crafts and
music is that of Seivane. Xosé Manuel Seivane, master of Galician
bagpipe craftsmen, found his children to be more than worthy successors at the head of the family workshop, and every time she goes
onto the stage his granddaughter shows what the production of the
work of the Seivane house can produce. “Obviously when I was in
my mother’s womb I must have already been dancing a jig”. Susana Seivane is the third generation from one of the most established
51
52
“Getting to know the ins and outs of the instrument you play is an
incredible philosophy”
Susana Seivane
workshops in the construction of bagpipes, and probably also the
person who granted it greatest international projection. One has
to acknowledge her work of divulging our traditional music and its
adapting to the new tendencies, through her own compositions and
arrangements.
What lies behind her mastery in playing the bagpipe is without
doubt her deep knowledge of the instrument on the technical level.
“Before I devoted myself to music professionally I worked in the
workshop and I really enjoyed it. Getting to know the ins and outs
of the instrument you play is an incredible philosophy”, although
this doesn’t take away difficulties in her work. “This involves many
years of study, research and patience. The bagpipes that are made
nowadays in the Seivane workshop have a well-deserved reputation, because my grandfather started working in 1936, and that is
a lot of years of experience”.
Susana belongs to this new group of bagpipe players who thanks
to the evolution of the instrument and good training are achieving musical excellence. In this sense she points out the importance
of craftsmanship: “It was the most important thing for the Galician
bagpipe-players nowadays to be able to express ourselves as we
wish with our instrument”. Without these advances it would be impossible to accompany the bagpipes with a piano, for example.
“The high standard it is achieving outside Galicia is impressive”,
she stresses.
Because, according to Susana, a Seivane bagpipe “enjoys good
chromatic health”, with a scale of one octave and a half. “In many
aspects they are ahead of the others”, she guarantees, in an allusion to the competition, given that a good part of these new craftsmen that are emerging were her grandfather’s pupils, although she
sees competition as something stimulating for the market.
Both for Susana Seivane and for Óscar Fernández or for any other
of the many artists who work in the musical area a lot, the relationship with the instruments and the importance of craftsmanship
knowledge in their making is fundamental. And the definitive tribunal at which this importance is judged is always the same one: on
the stage, a risky appearance in which the person who judges is the
spectator, for whom the complexity, evolutions and improvements in
the instrument often go unnoticed, shaded out by the mastery of the
artist’s performance.
53
At the Heart of the Wood
54
“It is very difficult to invent
something new, but there
is always room for mixing
certain techniques with
others, for applying them
in a different way. I try
to leave that space for
creativity”
When Javier Martín was doing his course in Economics, what was really going on in his head was
creating with his hands. So he left Madrid ten years
ago to realise his dream: to work on wood using
a lathe. To do so he settled as a craftsman in the
district of Vilamaior, in the La Corunna area, from
where eh designs and produces ornaments and
utensils made with the technique of the lathe, using
the name Taxus, Madera Torneada. His raw material is usually local wood, but he also works with
more exotic ones like ebony. He sees his craft as the
search for constant innovation starting from being
faithful to tradition and to craft techniques. Since the
outset Martín has explored all the possibilities the
lathe offers in order to show that, although it seems
the opposite, it is a craft with a lot of future.
How did you learn to become a wood turner?
I am self-taught. I knew how to carve, and I was always attracted to the subject of craftwork, specifically wood, and at the end
of the nineties I decided to experiment with the subject of the
woodwork lathe, as I only had theoretical notions. I bought an
English lathe that wasn’t very good, some tools, some books,
because there aren’t very many, and I started working to see
if it would work out. And I saw it did, that things were going
well and that it was a question of years of practice. After that
there was a great explosion thanks to the Internet, which allows
access to more information.
How did you decide to devote yourself fully to
wood-turning?
I did many different things until then and nothing really satisfied
me, while the subject of craftwork always attracted me. I was in
a very particular situation in life and economically, I took that
chance and I saw that I enjoyed it. It is a work at which I don’t
mind spending a lot of time and effort.
Because you taught Economics …
Going from economics to craftwork was a good change from
the start, but even while I was studying I was already involved
in handicrafts and all this. Indeed, I knew the theoretical aspects either through other people or through technical publications. So craftwork was always something that attracted me, yet
without getting involved in it. It was after time that I decided to
take that step.
Let’s have a look at your working process, but from
the beginning. Where does the wood come from?
I get the wood mainly from all the sawmills that still remain in
Galicia, particularly in the interior: in Ourense and in Lugo.
Some in Asturias as well. Sometimes also through neighbours
who come and give me wood, saying “I have a cherry tree that
is about to fall, come and have a look at it” or through gifts. It
is almost always green wood, that is, freshly cut. I keep it in a
warehouse, in traditional wood driers where the wood is kept
years until it can be used. As I started this process in 99, this will
allow me to have some very suitable wood. Most of the wood
is local, except for specialised cases or requests for which I can
55
it is interesting because on the ecological level you can avoid a lot
of chemical products and energy.
Once the wood is dry, how does the process continue?
I put the item on the lathe, varying the method according to its characteristics. If it is for culinary use I give it a covering of oil, using
an ecological oil so as not to provoke problems of allergies and in
keeping with health regulations. One gives it a series of coats of oil,
and then the product, as it is very dry, can be commercialised. A
non-culinary product has many possibilities for finishing: from waxes
and oils exclusively to finishing with pore-blockers, with water-based
varnishes. And the final coating is always with waxes because the
touch and the warmth that wax has is unequalled for me.
What is the key to using the lathe well?
It’s important for the lathe to be minimally good. It doesn’t have to
be a technical wonder, because wooden lathes have a very simple
technology. It has to be stable, well-aligned, that it can handle vibrations and all the demands that are made of it. The tools are very important; now there are very good quality steel-workers. We use fast
steel, which handles both vibrations and the heat very well. When
you are turning at three thousand revolutions the heat is very high,
and the tool heats up so much that you have to wear gloves so you
don’t get scars. I also make certain tools myself because they are
very specific and would be very expensive to buy. The cutting tool
and the scraper also have to be good. And if one adds technique
and experience to a good lathe and good tools, then things will run
smoothly.
How much time do you spend per day at the lathe?
use tropical wood. I greatly like working with chestnut, wild cherry,
walnut and ash … They are very grateful woods, and for the moment,
although increasingly rarely, they can be found on sale.
How does the drying process work?
I don’t use any kind of industrial nor semi-industrial drying agent.
It’s the old method of cutting the wood on a determined date, in a
determined manner, exposing it to an atmosphere of interchange
between air humidity and preserving it from everything that might
involve wind, rain or exposure to sunshine … This is a process that
no one uses nowadays because it has been replaced by industrial
drying processes, but it has the advantage that, in your workplace,
when the wood has reached an optimum state of humidity (normally
12%), it is much more secure than that which has been treated in a
different way, which might regain its humidity, the typical thing one
hears is “the parquet floor gives way here, this piece warps …”.
In this way, with the “inconvenient” factor of being a slow process, one can really get good quality wood. There is another way
of working, which is also very interesting, which is with the green
wood, with the work still being damp. Then you turn it and then dry
it. The process is obviously much quicker, because you do without
a large volume of wood for drying, but even so it is a very gradual
and natural process. Once it is dry you have to turn it again, do all
the finishing off, all the applications from other techniques such a
polychroming … For me, besides doing without the industrial drying
56
Generally eight hours, but sometimes more and other times even
more, because you are working with a piece that you really like and
you want to finish it. Other times tiredness overcomes you because it
is a job that is very demanding physically. When you have to work
with a tree that is sixty centimetres in diameter in order to take a
jug out of it … First there is what the wood itself weighs, because
I have put seventy kilo trunks in the lathe. In other works the opposite happens; they are exhausting because you are working with
something that is too small and you have to use a magnifying glass,
you build up tension, you have to sharpen the tools very much, you
sight deteriorates … And then the great fear that the wood-turners
have is always the same thing: an accident. A spindle rotating at
one thousand five-hundred rotations and a piece that weighs twenty
kilos and flies out, this isn’t the first time that there is a serious accident that can even cause death. Today one has to be extremely
careful with the safety measures, but one can never avoid the risk
completely. The small works also carry risks; you can lose an eye,
get your face cut.
And then they are finished off.
Yes, I don’t do any finishing off on the lathe. What I do is to sand
the piece down, if it can be done, which is in eighty percent of the
cases. In other ones there is no other way but to sand them by hand
for very specific things. The lathe facilitates, but it also limits a lot,
because it is a tool that is always in a process of circular revolution,
and if you get out of there is no option other than to stop and do it
by hand. Then I also think that the quality and detail is increased.
And besides, I often work with textures, with colours, and I do polychroming. Doing this on the lathe is very risky and the quality is not up to scratch.
What is eccentric chuck, a technique that you particularly master?
The normal piece goes on an axle with a point and a counterpoint on the left and
right of a cylinder. If I modify the central point, and if I spin on the axle as much on
the left as on the right, I manage to make the piece turn on a differential axis. If I
go on modifying this I have a lot of possibilities. One can get very curious figures,
both by doing them in a very geometrical and very precise controlled process or
letting yourself improvise. What really interests me now is the so-called ornamental
lathe, in which, which also involves eccentric chuck, but in general it is very geometric work. You have to design the piece very precisely from the beginning, and
the finishing work is impressive. When you are working you also like to vary. If you
are working making bowls, after a while you feel like having a break and doing
something different. You leave the simple sanding and polishing of smooth surfaces
and you start making textures...
When you have to think about the project you are going to do in
wood, how to you design it?
“And if one adds technique and
If it is an order you are more restricted, but if it starts out from
a design of mine the first thing I do is to get the wood and then
experience to a good lathe and
adapt myself to what I might find there. Other times one improvises. Wood is a very special material; inside it you might find
good tools, then you have the
a crack or a knot. Or otherwise you might find something that
keys to wood-turning”
surprises you positively: a streak, for example, that has many
aesthetic possibilities. One has to be able to adapt oneself to this
type of surprises. In general the wood-turners who do a part of
their work creating work in this way. You have to let the wood itself take you. There
is no perfect plan.
Wood is a special material due to its fragility. Does it disappoint you
often?
Not me particularly. I only had one moment of cutting and a couple of pieces that
broke. One was okay use and the other wasn’t, so at the moment it’s one-nil. If
you work for many hours with worries and stress, with routine, you tend to get
side-tracked, or to exaggerate certain conditions and you take them to the limit.
Especially when you are self-taught and you learnt as an adult, at a given moment
you might trust your possibilities too much and do things that are totally ill-advised
because you think you can do them. You have to be careful with wood. I work a
lot with gloves and a face-mask because a slight spark can cut you. Eye-protection is fundamental. Sawdust, particularly from tropical woods, can be irritating
to the eyes. And this is when it doesn’t produce dermatitis or when inhaling it
doesn’t cause dizziness or even fainting. And even internal problems, which are
the worst, because you don’t see the manifestations: lungs, hormones, etcetera…
Norms have to be established to have everything in its place, the tools in order and
the workshop clean.
Besides for the wood-turner, the process has a lot of risks for the
work itself. A slight error can destroy it.
Yes. Above all when they are very delicate pieces, when they have complicated
outlines, when one tries to exaggerate a certain effect to the maximum, this always
involves risk. This usually causes problems, especially at the beginning. Then you
start getting experience, you get the tool that is best for the job and you can almost
manage to overcome this. And you are always playing on a level of uncertainty
because you never know what a piece of wood might be like on the inside, no
matter how good it is. The other day, working on a piece of ebony that was perfect on the outside I found that it was like glass on the inside and it shatters into a
thousand pieces. This is something that sometimes happens to ebony through the
57
drying process or if the tree has some disease, but, of course, you
can’t see this until you open up the wood. And there are other surprises: sometimes you find a stone inside a tree, partridges, bullets,
pieces of iron...
How do you organise the work? Do you normally take
orders or do you mainly work for yourself?
Now I have a part of orders, so I have to adapt to requests, to the
rhythms and to the characteristics of each order. Above all when it is
restoring furniture or old pieces. Otherwise I make plans according
to the way I see the situation, the material I have …, and I always
try to leave a part of my time for experimenting, to carry on dealing with new challenges and personal projects. It is very difficult to
invent something new, but there is always room for mixing certain
techniques with others, for applying them in a different way, with
wood with which they haven’t been made before. I try to leave that
space for creativity because I have loads of projects.
What are the items that people ask for
most?
Mostly the decorative ones, the very ornamental ones. It is something that it
is difficult to find here on the market
and that here, due to a lack of a
historical tradition, is not very well
known. People are surprised that
certain things can be made in
wood. Then the utilitarian items,
typically for kitchen or for the
home, are being made less because the industry took over this
sector with lower prices although
with absolute limitations in quality,
variety and originality.
What are the ones you most
like to make?
Sixty percent of ornamental wood-turning and the rest conventional. I like to make
boxes, because they mix a lot of different techniques
of ornamental and conventional wood-turning: you can use screw
designs, add a lot of decorations, different tones, texture, carving,
mill cutting … It is very stimulating because it implies controlling the
design, the drawing …
Let us talk about the commercial part. How is the market right now?
That’s the worst part. It is tremendously difficult to live off this. If
we look at the normal part of the commercialization (the shops), it
is practically reduced to nothing. It is very difficult to sell an item
of ornamental wood-turning made here at a worthwhile price. At
the trade fairs wood is not a sector that is sought-out, much to the
contrary. It varies a lot by communities, and this greatly influences
the difference or cultural variation. The same wood isn’t as liked in
Andaluzia as in Navarre or as in Aragon, Estremadura or Galicia.
Here chestnut is highly valued, but not elsewhere.
58
Where does the strength of handicraft workshops lie?
In my case, in the complexity of the work. Mine forces me to obtain
a quality product and to work on the limit of self-sufficiency. If you
are of average skill you grow in capacity, acquiring the trade, as
used to be said. You spend a lot of time on it, you are up to date
about knowledge and techniques, and you’re on a higher level. In
the things that don’t require an extraordinary technique, that one
can learn in between three and eight hours if the person is receptive, the field is more open to these emergences on the market.
Could we say that craftwork is halfway between industry and culture or between industry and art?
Pure and genuine craftwork is clearly connected to culture. It is culture and it comes from a historical tradition; I don’t invent anything.
The latest novelty that I am introducing is applied thanks to a machine with some first plans dating from the XVII century, made in
wood and with only two irons pieces. In other cases, due to the
technique one uses, one finds oneself in a place of semi-industry or directly from industry. In this sector over
the last twenty or thirty years there has been
the introduction of technological and technical improvements, and they don’t always
guarantee that the development will
be purely handicraft. These are very
questionable. I know the limits to my
work; I can quantify them and define them. In the quality one can differentiate what is good from what
is bad. Craftwork is developed
in the XIX and XX centuries after
a previous development, occupying a gap that industry couldn’t fill,
which is that of the objects that need
the use of the human hand and brain.
In many cases machines can’t manage to
do what the hand can. Of course there are
convergences, but it would be necessary to
distinguish the frontier between craftwork and
industry very clearly.
What do you think the public in general’s view of
crafts is?
Firstly there isn’t a lot of knowledge. It depends on the areas and
the cultural habits. People don’t differentiate very well between the
craft product and the industrial one. The avalanche of products that
are on the market and that are really attractive have some influence,
but above all there is a phrase that is often repeated in craft fairs:
“Here it’s always the same stuff”. On the one hand it is true that
craftwork cannot change in certain aspects, but it is also true that
we have reached a moment in which there is a repetition of forms
that saturates a certain public, that public that has more knowledge
about crafts. And for the other public it is either one extreme or the
other, so that the item that is be showy, quick to get and cheap will
move forward. Nowadays globalization makes us lose specificity
(we find the same products here and in Munich) and the mixture
with industry makes us lose quality and originality.
Faced with this situation, what is the future for
craftwork?
“Wood is a very special
material, and one has to be
able to adapt oneself to this
type of surprises. You have to
let the wood take you.”
Moving on and changing. Making a root change both in the
sector and in the Administrations and also on the part of everyone involved. And even so there is no guarantee, because
everything has its limits. But without this, part of the craftwork
and above all the most handicraft based risk, if not disappearing, to become something so residual that it is worth nothing.
There will come a moment when it is impossible to distinguish
between what is sold in an industrial outlet from works sold in
a craft workshop. Craftwork should not be present just in the media but also in teaching,
and not just in Fine Arts, but in general. When you go and show young people a demonstration of what you do they are amazed. One should add to this the culture of speed, of
managing to get cheap things that wear out in a very short space of time, like what happens with clothes now. A craft product is something that lasts, to be maintained, something
that doesn’t come into the culture of arriving and filling which is predominant today.
Another area of your work involves short course in wood-turning. Who
are your public?
There is a very interesting part of the public who are workshop teachers, teachers of cycles
… People who are very interested and who have great capacity who see that both in their
training and in their daily activity they have a series of gaps. I am very happy to work with
these people because you know there is a seed. On the other hand, there are aficionados.
They are also interesting because there are people who enjoy this very much and show a
lot of passion and devote a lot of time to this. What is nice is that through this there is the
creating of networks of solidarity and information. We communicate if a new wood appears here, if we discover an interesting magazine and that type of thing. Then there are
also the young people: up to eleven, twelve years old there is great interest and if you help
them to do something, no matter how simple it is, they are very happy.
Taxus Madera Torneada
Vilamateo, Liñares 27
15638 Vilarmaior, A Coruña
TN: 981 781 927
www.taller-taxus.com
tallertaxus@wanadoo.es
59
“We Galicians are emigrants, and emigrant Galicians appreciate my work as if it were gold. They
hug me and cry...” So speaks Alberto Geada, a
twenty-eight year-old lad who is a clog-maker by
trade. He is the youngest clog-maker: “the one after
me is seventy”, he says. And so he recalls his experience in Frankfurt, where he went in May 2008
through the General Secretariat of Emigration, and
through which he discovered the passions that a
product – clogs – aroused in people when they associated it to their homeland, Galicia.
Alberto Geada started out eight years ago in his
workshop in Mondoñedo, encouraged by the
initiative that the district council was setting up
in rehabilitating a whole neighbourhood in order
to receive craftsmen, the Muíños neighbourhood.
Before he had worked in the carpentry sector,
but craftwork offered him an independence that
he would not find in another sector at the time to
mark his own working life, his working rhythms
and his lines of business. And why a clog-maker?
One might say it is a genetic issue. Alberto is the
second generation of clog-makers, after his father
Secundino, from whom he learned his craft. And
he guarantees that the fact of being emotionally
linked to this sector is an important factor for anyone who wants to carry on in this field of activity:
“I could only teach this craft to a son of mine”.
Indeed, the fact of having a stable clientele after
some holidays in the northwest, along with the offer by the council, was the final stimulus for Geada
to opt for making wooden shoes.
Prêt à Porter
Clogs
Alberto Geada took the clogs from the feet of rural
workers to those of the models who parade on the
runways of Barcelona and Paris. He has spent eight
years devoting himself to the crafting of wooden shoes,
above all clogs, madreñas (carved clogs) and albarcas (leather turn-shoes), traditional items of the peninsular north-west. From Mondoñedo, in the Muíños
neighbourhood, where several different workshops
have set up, Geada invents the Morning Clog, which
may even become the million-dollar clog.
60
“I learnt the technique from my father, but at the
same time I had to train myself”, so he travelled
the peninsular northwest in order to get to know
the last clog-makers and the last albarqueiros,
who make the traditional footwear of Cantabria,
the albarcas, as well as the makers of madreñas,
which come from Asturias, and which are still
widely used in agricultural work. He recognizes
that it wasn’t easy to get into the clog-makers
guild, as he found attitudes of lack of interest:
“The old clog-makers appreciate what I do and
respect me when they see my work. There was
one who didn’t want to receive me, he practically
wanted to throw me out. I took a piece of mine,
he started looking at it and I spoke to him for over
an hour. Then he saw me differently”. Today he
feels well-accepted by his “battling clog-makers”,
as Geada calls them.
From them he learned the techniques that predominated over different periods, a knowledge
that he now exhibits when he goes to craft fairs
and which he adapts according to the people
who watch him do his work. “When I am making
clogs I show them the technique from the moment
that they lived it, I don’t give them any touches of
61
62
quality like I should do, but I use a lot of tools”. All this knowledge for
Geada is a cultural heritage given that nowadays there are technologies
that could do a part of his work, more so when it is a product that does
not have the same demand here as fifty years ago. In this sense he feels
that distribution of the product is fundamental, through a good work of
marketing and valorization of craftwork.
“I’m going to bring
out some clogs
with new materials
and which will be
useful for today’s
people, the clog of
the XXI century”
On the Catwalk
In 2007 some spectacular clogs designed and made by Alberto Geada
went onto the catwalk, with a 16 centimetre heel, for the collection of a
new promise in fashion, the Lugo designer Manuel Bolaño. These items
were part of the “Miñas Celsas” collection, inspired by the woman at
the end of the XIX century, which was shown at such important events as
the show with the latest details in urban fashion called “Bread&Butter”,
held in Barcelona. In March of this year some new models of clogs by
Geada also went on show with the creations by Bolaño, on this occasion
in Paris. Yet fashion is not a business possibility for him, but another way
of revalorizing the product, as it serves to “create illusions with the clog,
to modernize, innovate...”, as he explains.
“Over recent years I have managed to introduce the clogs into the modern world, my clogs are on show now on important catwalks in Europe
through a designer”, which changes the concept of this footwear: “Clogs
were the footwear for the peasant and the labourer, so they had an important social value but they were not made visible. So with this work of
going onto fashion runways, into art galleries, which is what the society
is valorizing, recovers the illusion of many years of work”. This type of
idea also serves him to get himself known and to show the potential
of his works, given that “many people in the fashion world and major
multi-nationals go to those places, looking for new creators and, as it is
a very competitive world, the exclusivity of the item is very important”,
he reflects.
In this sense, Geada is making a spectacular clog that he foresees will
be on show in a couple of years. “I am going to make a clog that I more
or less have imagined, in order to present it at one of the most important
galleries in the world, in Las Vegas, it will be an item whose price is
around a million euros”, he guarantees. The reason for this particular
initiative is to generate expectations. “It’s going to be a great boom,
clogs costing a million euros”, made out of very special, unique and
exclusive materials. Creativity is fundamental in his work not to fall into
mere repetition, as Geada always tries to make a new tour or find a different sector in which to enter. He always tries to have a part of research
and innovation that goes alongside with the making of madreñas and
clogs, which are very successful commercially and are the base of the
workshop’s profit. “Clogs are at the last moment of their history and the
problem is that the clog-makers of the time were unable to adapt clogs
to the habits and needs of today’s people. I’m going to do that work.
63
“The old
clog-makers
appreciate
what I do and
respect me
when they see
my work”
I’m going to bring out some clogs with new materials and which will be
useful for today’s people, the clog of the XXI century”.
From Finisterra to Tokyo
A gaze at Alberto Geada’s workshop is like a visual trip through the
history of wooden footwear in the Northwest of the Peninsula. There
he has originals of galochas, a fusion between the madreñas and the
clogs that were used in the areas of Asturias and Galicia. There are
also copies of early madreñas, that were worn with gaiters. He also has
albarcas from Carmonera or those made with a split, and copies from
other parts of the State, like Catalonia, and even France, where they
are called sabots, as well as the typical Dutch ones.
But his concerns go further, given that he has a collection of over 150
original items of wooden footwear, which he intends to set up a centre
for the interpretation of footwear in the centre of Mondoñedo, in the palace that belonged to the Pardo Montenegro family and in front of which the Northern Way passes.
The collection includes spectacular items coming even from Japan, and the prices of the
clogs can reach up to 9,000 euros. From Turkey he has some takunyas, wooden sandals that are used to go to the Turkish baths, which are encrusted with mother-of-pearl
and are embroidered with silver thread. “I have some snow-shoes, from Canada, which
are laced with cat gut”, he highlights from among his most peculiar items. A large ethnographic patrimony that includes a good part of the world tradition of wooden footwear
with items even from the XIX century that Geada himself restored.
Alberto Geada Val
Acernadas, 5 -Lagoa
27776 Alfoz
TN: 636 396 824
www.albertogeada.com
64
He also has a large number of traditional Galician clogs, like the “thick” clog that was
used in the fields, or its female version, which had the name of slipper clog, which were
more open on the area of the upper. “There were also ones to go to parties and pilgrimages, like shoes. As there was no money to buy shoes, clogs were made to imitate
them”.
Along with the exhibition of wooden footwear are the tools and the clog-making stool
that Alberto Geada recuperated after his father sold it to a former Asturian customer.
In his way of working both on clogs and madreñas, which are the products he makes
most, one appreciates his good way of using the tools he had collected from other
clog-makers, like the sharp hoes or the llerdas, with which he shapes the piece in order
to make it adapt to the shape of the foot. He also highlights the
design that he usually puts on his works, a simple flower.
And his way of using the tools with such mastery has taken him
even onto the stage. It was with the show “Clogs Project”, by the
company Á Mercé das CirKunsTanzias, directed by the choreographer Mercé de Rande, in which the six dancers danced to the
rhythm both of Óscar Fernández’s hurdy-gurdy and of the sign
that comes out of the work that Alberto Geada did live. Currently
Quique Peón, according to Geada, is also working on a dance
and theatre show which will also have the presence of clogs,
something that particularly pleases Geada: “it’s the best I’ve seen
dancing with clogs”.
65
Literature Tailors
Growing up among books and magazines, nothing would make him think that his
life would be precisely that of dressing them. And that his passion would be bookbinding, creating luxury objects for the most select libraries. Twenty-seven years
ago Juan López Casás started Códice, a company that today employs five craftsmen and where they make “made to measure outfits” for very special books. He
talks about his work with true devotion, and laments not being able to dedicate as
much time as he would like to the work of binding books due to the administrative
obligations he has in running a company.
When he talks about bookbinding, Juan transmits passion for his work. He explains and carries out the processes with a mastery that only the hand of a craftsman
who has being doing this for years can do. Juan López
Casás is at the head of Códice, a craft workshop which
employs four other craftsmen and where they
“The leather book, by
carry out both book binding and restoring. “I once
an artist and on art, are
had three hundred incunabula here (editions presought by collectors,
vious to printing), I made
bibliophiles, people who
a book that was a cover
for the wedding of the
like books”
Princes of Asturias and
another one that was for
Pope Benedict XVI”. They are special books, for which
the customer looks for someone he can trust and offers
him very professional results.
The main customers that go to Códice are usually official
centres, councils or companies that wish to make a commemorative gift, especially books of signatures or gilt
books. He also does small and medium size print runs
for companies that, for example, wish to make a special
edition of a book in leather, numbered by a notary, as
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was the case of a book by the writer Manuel Rivas. He
never prints more than 500 reproductions, because then
the price is very high in relation to an industrial bookbinder, as with him the process is all done by hand.
Juan’s arrival at bookbinding was by chance, due to
affection. “Firstly I was taught how to do the typical fascicule, then I started training in courses in Lugo, in Madrid, and I gradually perfected this. Nowadays there
are things that practically only I do”, he explains.
And this attraction for the book as a luxury object was
something that allowed him to establish a close relationship with the customers who were looking for something
special. “I have a lot of bibliophiles, a good customer
portfolio, many of whom used to demand a great deal
of me but now give me much greater freedom. As I like
the issue of bookbinding and I got involved in a circle
of people who like old books, repairing, restoring and
making books for pretty libraries, leather books, well
bound one, I feel satisfied about what I do, and my
customers also like it”. Then Juan brings out a book that
is a veritable jewel: a volume on which he has attached
a special paper, which was printed with typography
and with engravings made ex-professo, with poems by
Mendinho, by Martin Codax and by Johan de Cangas.
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“We published a small number, we kept a few and we commercialized the rest, as it was a single edition with a limited run, it did very
well for us”, he comments. Because that direct relationship with the
customer is fundamental: “People know me, if I make something I
call them and I tell them ‘I’ve got this’, and they tell me to keep it
or not”.
that now is usually used in artists’ books and about art, which is 24
carat gold that hardens with heat. The process is very crafted and
very old, done with egg-whites...” Another very simple and current
method is with gold leaf, applied with a machine called a wheel,
which in Códice is a veritable collector’s item. “I wanted a machine
that would print, there was a new one, but I kept this one because
I liked it”. The machine, which he bought in Madrid, is over a hundred years old, and shares the work with a more modern one. The
printing is a process of great responsibility, given that is the engraving turns out wrong the whole of the work done is useless.
“Indeed, the leather book, by an artist and on art, are sought by
collectors, bibliophiles, people who like books”, so the price is no
impediment: “People who are bibliophiles appreciate the book and
say nothing about the price”. He mentions some of the peculiarities of his customers: some people have two Quijotes in the
de Ibarra edition of 1780, another one only collects atlases, another one cookery books... In fact, the restoring of the “In restoring the criterion is always
Quijotes was complicated, given that one has to respect the
that of conserving the original, as
original so much. The process implies a study of the materials, because sometimes they have deteriorated due to the sun best as possible, and to put as little as
or humidity, and may not appear to correspond to what the
original material was. “One needs to deconstruct it without it possible of the new in it”
ripping, because the criterion is always that of conserving the
original, as best as possible, and to put as little as possible
of the new in it”. If it is necessary to remake a part, one makes the In order to design the bookbinding on a book, in Códice we are
paper and grafts it on, one also gets the leather, dyeing it or ageing firstly interested in the contents, the subject matter, in order to esit if necessary, and one can also put new fly-leafs on, if they can be tablish coherence with the proposal. The design is usually done by
made like the original design.
hand, and, if it is necessary, we prepare a pattern for the printing
work. “If the work is more artistic, the design is done by hand,
He also makes facsimile editions, like an order he is working on including the drawing. We do gilt patterns, engravings of flowers,
for Obras del Puerto. “They had a unique book, we had to go and prints, mosaics... all by hand. If someone says the leather has to be
photograph it there, both the printer and myself, and make an origi- that tone, we dye the leather, if it is necessary we colour the paper
nal bookbinding. We found paper with the same acidity to make to be the same as the old one”.
the same book, just as had been made in 1909. The paper has
its tones, the typography as well, for the engravings we found the For this reason training is of the greatest importance for the correct
paper from the time, with photos of the date that it had”. It is usual development of the trade, but Juan is sorry that there isn’t an orto have to travel, because in the case of unique books the owners dered training course. “Bookbinding requires professional training;
don’t usually let the book leave the library.
it used to be a higher course of studies. Many years ago here in
La Corunna there was the School of Arts and Crafts, now it is the
In the case of bookbinding, the process is totally manual, from the School of Fine Arts, and one could study bookbinding there”. In this
stitching of the bindings to the decoration itself, which uses tech- sense he highlights the work that the Galician Craft and Design Cenniques such as gold cloth. “It is how one engraved in the past and tre Foundation is carrying out. “When we are worried we request
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courses, let that person come to improve such a technique”, and Códice has
already received some of them in their own workshop.
Because the founder of Códice is sure that the craft of bookbinding still has
a great future, but always involving innovation and adapting to the new
requirements of a changing society. “Now we are in the digital age, I’ve got
a project to design a box- book to put some pen drives or a DVD in, in the
shape of a book to be kept in the library and to put the magnetic support
on. One has to adapt to the times: if people don’t buy books because they
download them on the Internet, you can put your DVD with them on inside
them”, Juan explains. He recalls how the market of the fascicule has almost
disappeared, and how many works and projects are today presented in
the electronic format, and has been adapting his business, introducing the
production of folders and presentation boxes.
Códice Encadernación Artesanal,
Avda. de Montserrat, 16 B
15009 A Coruña
TN: 981 130 414
www.codize.com
juan@codize.com
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From the display cabinet he takes out a folder, ordered by the photographer
Manuel Ferrol, which covered and protected the reproductions he sold and
which Juan conserves like a little treasure. One among so many that one
can find around the workshop, relics like the bronze typographies that are
no longer made in Spain, or the old printing press that decorates the display
case. Examples from a whole life enjoying his craft.
bookbinding
The process of binding a book is laborious, and involves several different phases. Here we explain some of the most
usual techniques involved in this process.
Fold Sewing
The folios that make up each quire of the book are folded
in half and then bound.
Trimming
When all the quires are prepared they are trimmed so that
all the pages are on the same level.
Oversewing
The book is placed in the sewing machine and the quires
are sewn.
Placing fly-leaves and protective covers
Fly-leaves are the first and last pages of the book, while
the dust covers are to protect the book when it is handled.
The covers can be stitched onto the book or attached with
glue.
ment the glue is applied over the stitching and the ends
are rounded off.
Backing the book and preparing the spine
The two parts of the backing are joined together, a process that is known as binding. In order for the leather to
be resistant, the spine-board is made, a cardboard base
which helps in future handling.
Cutting the Leather
The whole cover has to be calculated, the cover, the hinges and the edges at the time of preparing the leather, if it
is going to cover the whole volume.
Paring the Leather
This means beating the leather so it is as thin as possible
with a tool called the paring tool.
Cutting
To make the book the same size it is cut with a guillotine.
This is also the moment when artistic techniques can be
applied, like gilt edges on the pages.
Gluing the Leather to the rounded edges
So that the surfaces are more resistant during use, the
leather is glued to the edges, which provides an elegant
result.
Heading
A range of colours that goes on the back and which is
known as the heading. It is not included only for aesthetic reasons, but because it grants greater solidity to the
book.
Attaching the Covers
The covers are cut to protect the book during use. These
are very important because the bind the cover to the book,
the cover to the surfaces, the leather edges and the leather
to the spine.
Cut and Placing of the Covers
The backings are cut in relation to the character and the
volume, always leaving a space that is known as a cell,
which is the part of the cover that overhangs. At that mo-
Pressing and Flattening
The book spends several hours in the press and it has to be
checked that the gaps between the binding and the cover,
as well as of the different lines are flattened.
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Collaboration
“There is no world if there is no mirror is absurd, but all of our relationships, no matter how exact they are, are merely descriptions
of man, not of the world: they are the laws of this higher optics that
does not offer any possibility of taking us further. It is not appearance, it is not illusion, but a coded writing that is expressed within
an unknown thing, very clear to us, made for us, our human position
with respect to things. Through this things are hidden to us”.
To Duplicate
Reality
Alberto Ruíz de Samaniego
Director of Fundación Luis Seoane
Friedrich Nietzsche.
Duplication – even serial multiplication – that is implicit in the whole
process of printmaking constitutes the central axis and at the same
time the conceptual motor of the work of Anne Heyvaert. This occurs across her representation of boxes, book, sheets of paper and
maps, as if reality had been captured by its identical double, to be
replaced by an identical twin that has hidden it away and substituted itself for it, perhaps with a certain malice in that this supposes an
effective deception and a fooling of reality. Alternatively perhaps,
and to the contrary, we ourselves will not come up with anything
less than the triumph of ambiguity, equivocation and ambiguity in
the realm of split personalities. She honours it and, as it were, is
faithful to it and credits its existence beyond all doubt – that is to
say of its own being divided into two once more, as much being
questionable, and thus certifying its authentic and true character of
which, naturally, it is impossible to be in doubt. In fact it is this, the
doubling of the existence of reality, that we have done since the
dawn of time.
In this way, in contemplating the Anne Heyvaert’s images, which
exemplify the duplication of figures, one surprises oneself at this
flagrant deviation from reality. At first glance we have a simple and
truly existing entity: a cardboard box, a page, or an unfolded map,
but we soon realise that things are neither that simple – nor unique
– and that in fact we are witness to two concurrent realities: one real
entity which is absent and in reality never there, and another that
becomes real exactly in the degree to which it captures and completely replaces the other. The deviation to which we are referring
is as subtle as it is oracular, and of great consequence: on the one
hand these images, in their blunt and precise physical clarification,
in the exemplary character that they possess as very specific visual
objects, and even as visual objects that are specifically marked –
the cardboard, the flaps, the whiteness and folds of the pages, the
infinite information that a map always presents – produce a very
powerful ‘effect of reality’: the accession to that which is present,
effectively and unquestionably. Here, as in all processes of mimesis,
detail plays – almost ontologically – a decisive role. Certainly, in the
extreme attention paid to detail, one can recognise the transparent
image of an object, perfect in imitation down to the last detail; but it
is also advisable to see a representation of pure plastic matter – pictorial or drawn – manipulated for representation and yet evident
in itself every time, spellbinding beyond a doubt in its presence. In
Anne Heyvaert’s work the qualities and potentialities of printmaking manifest themselves through this subtle representation, in all its
splendour. We know, besides, that this manner of representation,
minutely and intimately devoted to reality, has often been attributed
to the Flemish pictorial tradition. It is in this variety of the painting of
daily life (to use a term that artistic literature itself endorses) that the
referential universe of Anne Heyvaert – made to share and protect
intimacy, or to favour the processes of dreaming and the transportation of the lonely individual – situates itself in a conscious and undeniable manner. In fact, Anne Heyvaert’s Belgian nationality brings
to mind two significant facts with which this extreme will of mimesis
is concerned. On the one hand, a relevant writing belonging to this
Flemish tradition is ‘The Book of Painting’ published by Karel van
Mander in Haarlem in 1604, in which is demonstrated how the
pleasure of detail can become transformed into a obsession, and
even into a desire to cut the painting into pieces, to ‘carve it’ in
order to keep only the most beautiful part. Anne’s work is in other
ways no stranger to this ‘tension of the fragment’. The testimony of
van Mander is especially interesting because it concerns an important factor in the history of Flemish painting: the mastery of Frans
Hals, who was at the same time poet, playwright and painter, and
the glory of Haarlem at the end of the 16th century. He reaffirms
what Michelangelo himself had already criticised in Flemish painting: the excessive attention given to detail, approaching ‘trompe
l’oeil’ and in the extreme the generator of confusion and conceptual
disorder. This type of painting would also become the deception of
the spirit, as another Belgian painter, Magritte, understood so well.
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We know clearly from Francisco de Holanda that the great Italian sculptor considered this type of
painting to be created, ‘to deceive the gaze from the outside’, everything, ‘clothes, masonry, crops,
shadows of trees, rivers and bridges, that are termed landscape, and many figures here and there’,
an art that, in conclusion, pleases, ‘women, particularly the very old and the very young, and (…)
monks and nuns.’ That is, by all those accustomed to spending their time in solitude, retreat and
recollection. But in the end a dangerous type of painting, because such an accumulation of the
outdoors and daily life is arranged, in Michelangelo’s judgement, ‘without rhyme or reason, or
art, without symmetry or proportion’: that is to say that it leaves behind any ideal of harmony and
symmetry, precisely because of its love for and dependence on the most minute and real aspects of
the universe, the true skin of the world. It is because of this, according to the Italian, that it is only
liked by, ‘Some gentlemen who are deaf to true harmony’, in other words, painting that is never in
the unfurling of the empirical world, but is in the mind and spirit – abstract, immaterial, absent – of
those who organise it.
The other fact that we cannot forget, and which in some ways reinforces this passion for the exact
reality of empirical things, is the great cartographic tradition of the Flemish countries, which appeared at the same time as the birth of rational thought and the beginnings of science, where the
subjective gave way to the mathematical projections of Mercator or Ortelius, and to the real dimensions of the planets, freeing itself from the mysterious and theological traditions, thereby facilitating our rediscovery of the world: a recognition of the image of the world which, let us not forget,
comes from lithographic impressions, or engravings on wood or copper plates, that is to say, from
the techniques of representation dependent on printmaking. It is precisely from the middle of the
16th century that a school of producers and printers of maps, whose cartographic production immediately came to be the most important in the world, was developed in Flanders, then part of the
Spanish Empire, and held this central place for an entire century. The secret of such success resided
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initially in the selection and critique of the information employed, in the
exquisite elaboration of the plates, and in the effectiveness of the methods
of commercialisation. A whole life style distanced itself widely from the
Neo-Platonic (mystical, grandiloquent and theosophical) concerns of the
Florentine tradition and that, through its purity and almost miraculous simplicity, its precise optical lucidity, with an intimate silence, reserved and
feminine, Vermeer of Delft (for example) knew how to reflect with perfection and angelic evaluation.
One will be able to recognise, as a consequence, two levels of reality in
the images of Anne Heyvaert: her actual truth, betrayed, simulated, deviated, doubled, and her de facto truth, which has imposed itself by usurping the place and rights of its precedent. In as much as that this division
should not be as sharp, because the case here is not exactly a split with
the truth (that is to say, in a situation of understanding the particularity of
each) and is due to a perversion (etymologically a splitting, a dislocation)
of its own right, to the extent that these visual phenomena, in practice, set
out the same information as the thing itself. The fact is, as we have stated,
the presentation is meticulous to the finest detail, in a sort of extreme
mimesis that results, due a pure love for the thing itself, by absorbing it,
concealing it beneath the folds of its twin representation. All of this is, as
we have said, extremely paradoxical – and in fact Anne Heyvaert’s work
places itself continually before paradoxical objects: the duplication places
us in front of objects that are at the same time one thing and another: for
example, a map and something other than a map, a page from a book
and something slightly different to a page from a book. But what is also
interesting in Anne Heyvaert’s artistic process is that this eventuality itself
confers a failed attempt on all rules and in addition an amendment to the
whole notion of what is real, the credibility of which is now compromised
by a representation very close to falsification, such as occurred with the
pipe of Magritte: to the extent that, in order for this effect to occur, the real
Anne Heyvaert’s work
places itself continually
before paradoxical objects:
the duplication places us
in front of objects that are
at the same time one thing
and another: for example,
a map and something other
than a map, a page from a
book
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object itself has disappeared and has been replaced solely
and completely by its representation – as occurs specifically
with a map in respect to the territory that it represents. The
appearance of the double implies, with a strangeness that
is certainly troubling, the calling into question of all reality,
or at least its distancing from that which is perhaps soothing, but also agonising and terrible. The double supposes,
by definition, not just the duplicity of this or that image, but
moreover its own existence and the knowledge of all images. What refutes all arguments to the extreme and even
more so in the images that Anne offers, is the very fact of
the objects that she replaces or responds with: the fact that
they can exist, that is, that by so saying there should be an
irrefutable proof of their existence. That, in sum, when we
see things, we are in front of objects worthy of being taken
into consideration in as much as they are genuine and real,
or (which is the same thing) perfect and beyond doubt, existing. As the philosopher Clement Rousset has pointed on a
number of occasions, the shadow of the double, omitting the
reality of particular objects, bases itself dangerously on the
fact of existence in general. And this is why, finally, all reality
exposed to replication ceases, even, to be credible.
The conclusion, as we see, could not be more alarming – and
certainly gives us much to think about, which is one of those
things that at the very least we can demand of art – so that
we have an understanding of reality, even
the reality that must be removed and replaced by another uncertain
reality which, upon being
eliminated, guarantees and ends up
attesting to its
questionable
latent presence. In other words,
equally
strange
and paradoxical:
in order to
have access
to reality – and
to make it as consistent as much as believable – we must put
reality itself to question
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and by this short circuit conceive of a representation that is
no more than a copy, and thus a ruse, a rival and an unfolding, a dislocation that ends up affecting us as if it concerned
reality itself. In this way, that which finally takes place, by
means of the support (or betrayal?) of this artistic intervention
and beyond the object, is an intervention that presents itself
not only in art but also in many other areas of life – in cartography, maps, plans – something, let us say, other than normal
that remains veiled and separated in a dimension that cannot be assumed or presented, but which is the obscure basis
of our reality, constituting the final degree of our present life.
What takes place in the mimesis is assuredly other than reality, something else that duplicates reality and splits from it by
betraying itself, we might say, in occupying it in totality and
on which reality – that entity as provisional as it is fragile – itself is based. One is right, then, to question it: but in the final
analysis, what is reality? In the end, does reality exist? This
is precisely that which is always suggested by the theme of
the double: nothing of what we see is singular and nothing is
entirely, in the same way, profoundly and lastingly real. Is it
because of this that we care so much about appearance, our
representation of an improbable or vanished reality, for being the only evidence we have, however insignificant it might
be? Is this the reason then for the greatly emotional sentiment
towards the smallest and most still detail shown in the Flemish pictorial tradition and despised by the Florentine idealism
of Buonarotti, the seeker of harmonies and ideals that are
always beyond vile substance? All that our eyes see is pure
spectacle and possibly a vanity that is but smoke, shadow
and nothingness, where there is no guarantee of the reality
that accredits it. Reality is a phantom (or a fantasy). One can
never believe ones eyes, as nothing of that which one can
see is part of the reality which, being exposed to a duplication, is by definition the indelible mark of the ‘non-real’. The
double, un-doubling itself, is the undeniable evidence of the
little of reality that we possess or, to paraphrase Lacan, the
confirmation that reality, if it exists at all, is not everything,
is an incomplete entity, an unstable universe, volatile and
perishable, which it is necessary to care for and to unfold,
as one would care for a map of a lost treasure. Reality is
the total absence of the infinite whiteness of a blank page
or an unreadable book, open and as yet unwritten, such as
those that Anne Heyvaert likes to show to us. Reality is like a
perfectly (re)constructed fantasy, unfolded as if by one who
fulfils the action – always capricious and useless – of origami, or as one who arranges an irreducible and untreatable
blank page with cartographic Flemish precision.
And is it not precisely this non-totality, this uneasy evidence of crumbling and absence in the optical effects, once again absolutely paradoxical, that Anne Heyvaert presents to us? Does not the immaculate
and unreadable whiteness of her books and papers constitute an indication, a sort of stain on constructed reality – whose function would
be identical in this sense to that of the Lacanian object because it
is missing from its place – which works precisely as a warning to
navigators, a sign even of the inaccessibility of reality? These uneasy
and strange folds arranged implausibly upon the surface itself of
maps and plans – do they not function as an obvious twist in the
visual dimension of reality, like an obscene rustle in the satinised
representation which then indicates to us its definitive inaccessibility,
and as much as warns and counsels us not to accept or verify the
inconsistency and even the impertinence of all searches for ultimate
reality? These divisions, that duplicate and superimpose themselves
upon even the surface of the representation, are signs of the indisposition and radical strangeness of that which may never take place, of
the impossible and unrecognisable existence of each and every one
of us, and of the inadequacy of all techniques of representation, as
much for its absurdity – a pleasant absurdity – as for anything else.
As a consequence reality ends up being invisible, unrecognisable: it
is always veiled and concealed under the multiple creases and folds
across which the fantasies of reality like to involve and disguise themselves. It is to this invisibility of reality, that is not, finally, an accidental
invisibility, but to the contrary, that without doubt results in a necessary lack of reality itself beneath the eventualities of its concealments,
that these folds and duplications bring us. The object of desire for
reality is in effect invisible and unknowable, inappreciable and unrepresentable as such, but precisely to the extent to which it is unique
– that is to the extent that no representation can suggest its complete
or total knowledge by means of mimesis, replication, mathematical or
scientific measurement, or copying. Because, by definition, reality is
not that which has no double, that which can be neither folded nor
undoubled: an unappreciable singularity for which there is neither a
possible mirror, nor cartography, nor calculation. Reality is an entity
that is impossible to capture. It is impossible to capture its non-visibility,
its non-accessibility, except through its doubling and undoubling: that
is to say, never by direct means. The only way – and a strange way
– to make visible the invisible reality is to show, precisely through its
double, the evidence of its non-visibility.
I would like to conclude with a biographical detail that does not
appear to me to be futile on this point. Who better than Anne Heyvaert – born by chance in Memphis, a wanderer from childhood the
infinite geography of reality, a perpetual inhabitant of the obligatory and provisional, a Franco-Belgian artist who now lives at the
‘Finisterre’ of Europe – to understand that the search for any identity
is a vain enterprise? This on the principle itself that it is, understandably, never possible to be able to identify what is real. Reality is that
which always remains refractive of all attempts at identification: that
which has no ownership, an unassignable and fugitive whiteness, an
open and unreadable book. Reality is forever a diversion. Reality is
a stranger.
(translated from the French version of the text by Richard Noyce)
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Anne Heyvaert was born in Memphis, Tennessee (USA) in 1959. She is
the daughter of René Heyvaert, a Belgian architect and artist, and at the age
of two she moves with her family to Belgium and then to France. She studies
at the École Supérieure des Beaux Arts de París, where she chooses the workshop of M. Carron and M. Faure, due to their teaching based on the tradition
of the history of art, as opposed to her father, who had an avant-garde and
radical tradition. Later on this would stand out in her work, the materials she
uses, and the details, etc.
She comes to Galicia for the first time in 1977 and settles in 1980 in Santiago de Compostela, where she begins to make contact with the Galician art
scene. In 1989 she moves again, this time to Luxembourg, where she begins
to learn the techniques of engraving and soon sees the potential of engraving
for her work in these techniques that will allow her to produce her work, along
with other techniques in printing such as silkscreen, copying, representation,
multiplication and transformation...
Since 1994 she has been back in Galicia again, in Oleiros, where she has
also set up her workshop. Besides her creative activity, she is a teacher and
researcher at the Fine Arts Faculty of Pontevedra, where she teaches issues
related to drawing, graphic techniques and experimental projects.
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Anne Heyvaert
R/ Río Sil, 27
15173 Oleiros
TN: 667 543 690
anneheyvaert@hotmail.com
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