Back in Madrid

After over two weeks on my own it was a real pleasure turning up on my aunts doorstep in Madrid again. They where excited to see the pictures and hear my stories.

It took me a couple of days to wash clothes, see family, catch up, go into town to check out a few galleries and see and exhibition on Sorolla and buy a few necessities. On Wednesday I was ready to tackle Toledo.
It is a half hour train journey from the capital and well worth a visit. The place is made up of layers of archaeology, from Romans to Arab to Visigoths to medieval and times of the inquisition.















There are archaeological sites always on the go and buildings have become structures, which have been remodeled and changed so much over time they are indecipherable warrens of stone, plaster and wood.

I was coming to see one man and his team who work on these structures and restore and conserve this amazing building. Enrique has lived here all his life and I was privileged to be invite to his house, the drive to work is jaw dropping. He showed me a couple of his current projects, which included this beautiful building. Set on Roman foundations, this was once upon a time the dwelling of an important family of the city. Now it was privately owned and made into a number of flats.

However under the plaster were remains of wall decorations painted on a film of lime and there where stone arches and beamed ceilings to uncover. Other treasures where revealed like this post that had been imbedded in a later wall partition and medieval graffiti. I marveled at how the council, the conservationists and the owners agreed on what to keep and what to change. Enrique was a real mixture of bounding energy, eye for detail and a combination of respect for the old, but also keen on the new. Apart from this he is also a designer and craftsman in his own right and has won recognition for his innovations with plaster and glass.

His house is full of works by Enrique and his lovely wife obviously also has a big influence on his style. Their office was very sleek! Had to take a picture of it…


That took up all of Wednesday, it was such a hot day and I did not pay attention to my liquid intake that I really did let myself get dehydrated – silly girl!




On Thursday I went to see some one who has worked for Mark Whinstanley for eight years and Mark told me I would enjoy meeting Oscar. The bookbinding shop he has set up is wonderful!

It is a real show piece and quite unique for Madrid. The shop is also a gallery and you can see the workshop behind the counter.

As well as being a very good bookbinder he also makes exquisite sculptures out of ephemera like sea shells, bits of broken porcelain and recycled objects.

On Friday I went to see a foreigner living in Madrid. Anton is a very successful jewelry maker. He is South African, studied in the best jewelry college in Munich and ended up in Madrid. It was really interesting to get his perspective on Spanish craft and design at the moment.

Both Oscar and Anton agreed that Madrid was essentially conservative and that I would see more avant-garde in Barcelona.

The other interesting thing that happened to me is that I decided to see the new(ish) fashion museum. It is rather out in the sticks and it was another scorching afternoon, but worth a visit. I found out that the Centre of National Entomology was also based there. They are hoping to open a museum of their own in the net 3 to 4 years. This is the nearest thing I can describe the V&A as, it is looking at lifestyle throughout the ages in Spain. It really ought to be a combined with the Museum of Decoration and the Museum of Fashion.
I spoke to the Sub-director on the phone and although he said he was busy we ended up talking for over 40 minutes. We empathized over the demise of the traditional crafts in Spain, I had more hope than he about the future of them.

Before I knew it the week was over, I was picking up a new car and heading south to the Costa Blanca!

Galicia

Gijon is a large town with a strong fishing industry and guess what - the day after I arrived it was Feria! And every one was out on the beach using these wonderful tents as refuge from the sun and wind. I was very tempted to find out if I could buy one. It was the town's Saint's day and there was an open air mass going on, for those who where interested, but most people where more interested in eating and drinking. If you went into a bar you would find yourself in front of a row of green bottles and a wet floor. This is because you can only purchase a bottle of cider, not a glass, and then the bar-tender pours the cider from a very impressive height so that lots of air gets into the drink, because it is best while bubbly, once the drink goes flat you throw the rest into a drain on the floor. A man very kindly let me have a glass, I was not prepared to drink a bottle as I was driving on to Galicia.

I stayed in two amazing places in the ¨Rivera Sacra¨ region. This area is real wine country and the vineyards are on very steep slopes. So, the villages are quite isolated and I am told that only 50 years ago you could see people in this region live authentically medieval lives. This is a region of Spain where a huge percentage of its population immigrated to other parts of the world. Life must have been quite tough.

I met some amazing makers, luckily for me, Galicia does produce a sort of ¨Crafts¨ magazine called ¨Obradoiro¨ and I found a lovely couple who where very happy to invite me over to their home and studios. Anna Champeney is a weaver with a curatorial background and is collecting samples of traditional textiles as well as producing beautiful products out of linen which, she has dyed herself. Her partner, Lluis Grau is a well-respected basket maker and a member of the Basket makers Association who use 6 Queen Square.

He is originally from Cataluña but moved up to this region with Anna and is now an expert on Galician as well as Catalan baskets.

I really enjoyed spending most of the day with them talking about the importance of craft as a social manifestation of culture and essential in creating a link between the future and the past.

They explained why Spain does not recognize craft as something of cultural or artistic value. Craft is subsidized and administered by the ministry of industry and not the ministry of Art and Culture. So they are only interested its profitability. I could go on.... but I wont. I am itching to write a few articles and talk to a few people back in Madrid.

Lluis showed me some lovely baskets made for very specific purposes. These have now either been substituted with plastic objects or the task for which they where made is no longer done. They sit around like rare exotic birds, saved from extinction by craftsmen like Lluis, who get pleasure merely out of their beauty and history.



There is a Basket whose shape fits perfectly on top of your shoulders and over your head, to pick grapes in the field with. You can see it in the photo on the floor.

The place where Anna and Lluis live is magical and the rent a cottage out where you can come and learn one of these crafts; check out the website: www.casa-dos-artesans.com



I enjoyed a wonderful wooden plate of spaghetti, washed down with a glass of wine from the neighbor’s vineyard.




The other maker I went to see was a young guy known as Elias of Gundivos. He is a ceramicist who uses one of the oldest methods of turning have come across. He is the last in his village to do this and has been renovating a medieval rectory to house his collection of old pots and give workshops. He also hopes to attract other ceramicists for lectures and conferences. He is very aware of the importance of this unique tradition and I met him just as he starts to launch himself outside of Galicia.


He showed me around this amazing building, with its fantastic courtyard where he gives his demonstrations. Inside, the wooden planks on the floor are at least 45cm wide and the stonewalls where at least 80cm thick.



He uses a low wooden turning table, which he turns with his foot. After firing the pot in a wooden stocked oven, he scorches the object in a fire and once it is black he waterproofs the inside by sprinkling resin powder, which melts and turns into a liquid while you line the inside. These pots and wine vessels are the closest thing to the way the Romans made their pots!

Elias considers himself a laborer, not even a craftsman and everything he does is for his village. To put it on the map. He is succeeding in that tourists now come to him. He does not go to craft fairs, however he sells his wonderful pots for as little as 7 euros.

I left this region determined to come back and do some more exploring. I was spending that last few days on the west coast writing up my interviews and organizing next week in Madrid.

Hitting the North Coast

My stay in Leon was brief, I had long distances to cover to get here and to move on and reach the area known as Cantabria. The Parador in Leon is the largest I have stayed in, yes; the building in the photograph is the hotel. One of the reasons I wanted to come here was because I would coincide with a craft fair. It was a good opportunity to meet several makers at once from different areas of the region. There is a real mixture of standards and traditional crafts sit uncomfortably next to contemporary ones, with very little fusion between the two. A large percent of makers are what I would describe as hippies of the 80s - I don't mean this in a derogative way. In a lot of cases, it is thanks to them that some of these crafts are surviving.

I left early the next day excited to head in to the mountains and, I was rewarded with some great views. On the way down to the coast I had to take some nail-biting bends ... and it began to rain very hard and then there was hail... all quite exciting.

The landscape has changed dramatically from hot and flat to green and lush. This is a Spain I do not know and I was looking forward to arriving at Santillana del Mar, where I was going to stay for two nights. The buildings are made of a soft yellow stone and there are wooden verandas. I arrived at another feria!! The village was full of children and they where being chased by these giants who would run after them beating them with brooms. They where also letting off a lot of firecrackers and everyone was having a great time. When that came to an end the music started and the BBQ was ready - free food and beer - all paid be the local council.


My mother says that maybe paying for Spaniards to have a good time keeps the national health costs down!

Santillana is very picturesque, but it relies heavily on tourism. I looked for local crafts but did not like anything I saw except some pottery, which ironically, when I asked the potter where he got the style from he told me that he had seen it in England! I bought a piece as my souvenir of this place.
I did make a trip to Comillas a town further down the coast. To spend a few hours on the beach and have some lunch. There where lots of people out enjoying the sunshine and there was a triathlon going on.


I sat in a bar overlooking the whole bay and ate baby cuttle fish and croquets and drank a pineapple juice, while I watched fit men running down the beach to do a long swim in the cold sea.

Oh, Comillas also has a building designed by Gaudi, it is called 'El Capricho' and you can enjoy eating there, it is now a posh restaurant. I preferred Comillas to Santillana, it was real, were as the village I was staying at felt like a theme park.


After resting and catching up with work, I was moving on to Gijon and then to Galicia.

Zamora and its Outskirts

When I got to Zamora I found out that they are celebrating a Feria. Ferias happen all over Spain because every village, town and city has a patron, or Saint watching over everyone. So, once a year you have to give thanks and celebrate!

I arrived on Wednesday evening and the party would start at noon the next day, so I had one morning to find and interview a craftsman. I headed for the Tourist Information Office and explained what I was after. There was a guy there who was just visiting the office, he turned out to work for the local government and also happened to be a sculptor. He offered to introduce me to a couple of people and then proceeded to give me a guided tour of the town. Zamora turns out to have over 20 Romanesque churches and it is also the place where El Cid came from.

The Parador I was staying at was an amazing building; sometimes they are one of the most important buildings in the area and worth a visit even if you are not staying in them.

The following morning I headed to a woodcarving workshop run by Jose Perez and his father. Jose is only 36, he finished a 5-year course in Salamanca and was teaching others by the time he was 20. He learnt the trade from his father and between them do all the large commissions in the area. With so many religious institutions around, 90% of their work is either restoring or making wooden floats that are carried around the village at Easter times. These things are enormous! In Zamora there is a museum dedicated to them.
Sadly Jose was handing out end of term grades that morning, so I spoke to his father, who also had a pair of students in the workshop doing an internship. Here you can see him cutting out a design and on the right you can see some panels Jose has carved for a door. They also, from time to time, make pieces of furniture or mirrors for clients, but they have enough work for the next three years!
I was impressed with the quality, but it was obvious that this workshop is healthy and busy because of the unique circumstances it finds itself in. I did ask if they had been involved in the restoration of an important crib in a nearby village and Miguel said no, some restorers from Madrid had be involved with that project.



The course Jose took in Salamanca has now been shortened to 3 years.

Another craft in Zamora, which I have not seen anywhere else is papier mache dolls. Apparently a couple make them and since leaving Zamora I have also seen them in Leon, so they must be doing well, but I find them a bit creepy. I took this image of them in a store and they have an 'retro' feel about them, that is perhaps appealing to people.


Instead I went to the Museum of Ethnology - which I highly recommend. It is only 4 years old and sponsored by 'Caja de Espana', a large Spanish bank. There are three floor and each concentrates on a theme. The top floor was all about clay, used in buildings and pottery. The second was all about traditional customs and the first was about home life and artifacts. On my visit the museum also had an exhibition of sculpture by a modern artist. His pieces where displayed among the permanent collection and where directly linked with the permanent collection. It was the first time they had done this and I intend to speak to the Director to ask him how it has been received.

I said good buy to Zamora and made another detour for a tiny village west of where I was meant to be heading. The lady at the tourist information office told me that the traditional costumes of this region of Extremadura where made in 'Calbajares de Alba'. When I got there I thought there was no way there could be a workshop of any kind in this dusty village in the middle of nowhere! I asked the attendant at the petrol station and was told that that did not exist anymore, but just as I was about to get into my car, she said 'wait lets ask the village idiot' - I swear that is what she said! Anyway, this poor individual was walking along the other side of the road and came over when called, she said yes there where still some ladies working at the workshop, so I went looking for them. I found them; Maria Jesus and Mercedes, and boy was I in for a treat!











The work is so labour intensive that it takes 5 women 5 months to produce a skirt. It is a one-off and will cost about 1,300 euros. These skirts are used on special occasions and handed down in the family. The building was build in the 60s to support the future of this craft. However, there are only 5 ladies left and they are all retired, three of them currently not working because of family responsibilities or ill health. They can´t see a future and have no one to teach. I think the location is a big factor, but I came away passionately wanting to save this craft if I can.
You can learn more about the town on the following website - all in Spanish of course...
Calbajares de Alba (Zamora) www.geocities.com/TheTropics/Cabana/6344/PRINCIPAL.HTM
you have to look up "Traje Carbajalino" on the left hand side.

I have not put the best pictures in - you will have to come to the exhibition of photographs I will put up at the Guild when I return.

Like the bullfighting costumes, the skills needed to keep this traditions alive, have to be used in a modern context or they will disappear, and when you think that rich people are quite willing to spend 3 to 5 thousand pounds on a mass produced handbag or watch, you have to wonder where the logic lies?...

Apart from the influence of marketing, of course.

It doesn't help that I was told by Maria Jesus that she did not want me to photograph some of the pieces and that she did not want more work, she was too old to teach and just saw it as a hobby. Mercedes, who is more active and sees the importance of what they are doing, explained that unless there was a regular income for the 5 ladies, you could not expect them to continue or show interest in passing their skills on. You can´t make a living out of it.

I said good buy with the sun going down and leaving a trail of red dust on the road.

Extremadura is so rich in crafts and manual skills, but feels like the third world, maybe that is why they still exist? I wonder how the recession will effect them, so far I have seen little evidence.

On the way to Salamanca

Leaving Plasencia in the middle of the afternoon meant I had plenty of time to roam the countryside before arriving at my next Parador. On impulse I had bought a postcard a few days earlier of one of the largest Roman bridges in Europe. It happened to be quite near by, (well, more like an hour's detour), so I decided to go and see it as well as stop in a village where another well-respected potter lived.

He is the last to use a technique of encrusting designs into the pots. Even more interesting to me was the fact that he prepared his own clay, he knew where to find it, calculate it's quality and vary the heat accordingly. Apparently this region has some of the best clay in the world in terms of resisting high temperatures.

I enjoyed driving in this very rural and pretty barren part of Spain. When I got to the bridge, I was very impressed that it is still in use 2007 years after it was built.

What are so amazing are the extremes you find within an hours drive of Palencia. To the west is a valley where the best cherries in Spain grow, throughout most of the summer; they are the size of small plums! In the Jewish town of Hervás, we saw people selling things from their allotments, such as these wonderful yellow string beans; I thought they hadn't seen the light. Hervás' was a medieval Jewish town. Its narrow, steep streets are lined with houses made with adobe and chestnut-wood frameworks, their roofs plastered with Arab tiles to shield the wind. The whole community was evicted during the inquisition apart from those who were willing to convert to Christianity.

Only a short drive away is the national park of 'Monfrague', famous for its vultures and eagles. This is wild and arid looking land and you can imagine a cowboy ride up through the mid day haze at any minute. Houses are built of flint stone and shade is only found in man-made structures.

Lucky for me, my family took me to a natural watering hole where the locals cool off. We sat by the river, watching adults behave like children and I tasted the local cheese called CASADA - sort of like a fondue thing, which you just mop up with bread.
On the way to Salamanca I stoped at a village called 'Banos de Montemayor', where I had been told I would find people working with whicker. I was too late, the last of them had retired a couple of years ago and had opened a shop selling whicker-ware from china, the shop was called "Shanghai".
I got to Salamanca late, my hotel was just on the other side of the river and I could not believe the view when I pulled back the curtains.
I thought I would list some web-links on the people I have seen. However, there is really very little I can show. To get a taste of how behind the craft industry is in promoting itself have a look at this video which I found on the local press web-page: http://www.extremaduraaldia.tv/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=&task=videodirectlink&id=3155