IF YOU'RE in the Comunidad Valenciana any time between now and the early hours of March 20, you may notice an awful lot of noise and colour on the streets. It's the season for the region's biggest festival,...
The Handmade Tour: Explore Spain through its arts and crafts
16/08/2020
TRAVELLING around Spain is safe – as long as you stick to regulations and recommendations in place for everyone's benefit – and everywhere in the country that makes even a fraction of its money from tourism is keen to have you back.
But it's going to be a slow summer, as many of those who would be planning their holidays right now are still a little nervous about taking themselves off somewhere they have not been able to actually see through their window in lockdown, be it the next town, next province, halfway across the country, or even into international territory if you're thinking of travelling to Spain from another part of the world.
Still, while you're overcoming your natural initial nerves and weighing up whether to take the plunge, why not take a 'tour' of Spain from your own home to see what you're missing? We bet you'll soon realise you can't keep away and be booking yourself a trip before you've had time to talk yourself out of it.
One unusual and enlightening way to 'visit' Spain – and definitely worth following up in person, not just online – is by setting off on a circuit of the country's arts and crafts.
Pre-pandemic, the best possible route would have been trawling round the Mediaeval markets that crop up between January and approximately Easter all over the country, packed with colourful stalls full of handicrafts and decorative items and traditional foodstuffs from different regions, and which are exciting enough just to browse and mop up the atmosphere, even if you don't spend any money. But of course, any due to take place from around early March would have been called off – hopefully, we'll be out of the woods and they'll be back on the streets by the beginning of next year.
In the meantime, check out 'The Handmade Tour'. Beautiful, imaginative and often highly-practical items, lovingly created from scratch, are starting to become something of a trademark of the area their makers come from, especially as local and regional culture and history frequently creeps into their design.
And they'll inspire you to want to see the areas they originate from with your own eyes, too.
The tale behind the Handmade Tour
Pictures and testimonials of workshops, studios, products and landscape, urban and rural, mountains and coast, from north to south, captured on screen by top Spanish photographer Paco Marín show a real and living image of Spain's artistic talent, which regularly draws on traditional crafts and trades that a given area would have lived off until centuries, or even just decades, ago.
You get a backstage tour of the working process which makes you feel as though you're at the heart of it, drawn into the centre, in a way that rarely happens with mass-produced goods in mainstream shops – and you can guarantee you'll be viewing, and perhaps buying, something that you would not stumble across anywhere else.
This is all part of online retailer Amazon's drive to get sole traders and small businesses on the world map – once, a local shop's custom would be limited to people who lived in the same town and dropped by in person, or at least, to visitors to the area if they were based in a tourist belt, but nowadays, even these family-run little units can export their goods thanks to Amazon Marketplace. For this reason – as well as the thousands of new jobs created by its ever-growing network of distribution and logistics hubs in the country – Amazon's landing in Spain in 2011 and its ongoing multi-million investment in the country has been a great help to the economy and enabled small-time entrepreneurs to 'go global'.
Now, Amazon Handmade does the same, but with traders who make their own, bespoke goods – everything from jewellery to soap – and although the scheme has been running since 2016, supporting over 50,000 craftsmen and craftswomen in 80 countries via its domains in the USA, Canada, México, the UK, France, Germany and Italy, it has only been operating in Spain since last month.
“Here at Amazon, we invest millions of dollars every year to help small businesses worldwide,” says the global manager for the new Handmade Tour, Katie Harnetiaux.
“We're committed to empowering craftspeople, sharing their products and telling their personal stories.
“We celebrate each and every one of their different creation and manufacturing techniques, from the deeply-traditional to the most modern.”
La Cosmética de María, Villasana de Mena (Burgos province, Castilla y León)
María Gómez now lives in Bilbao, in the Basque Country, but is originally from the province of Burgos, famous worldwide for the spectacular gothic cathedral in its capital city of the same name.
She started 'experimenting' at home and trying out her 'recipes' on friends and family, and now, after 'many trials, tests and versions', her vast range of delicious-smelling toiletries, made with 100% natural ingredients and no chemicals, are selling by the bucketload.
With an average rating of 4.8 stars out of five, María's collection includes purifying face soap made from clay, rose and cocoa; 'solid' shampoos for different types of hair – they come in bar-of-soap format, so no spillage (see photograph 2, left), and she even does a conditioner in the same shape – organic bath salts, tiger balm, all-purpose balm, heat pads, mixed gift baskets, and more, all in a variety of aromas and using plant-based mixtures such as coffee, cinnamon, lavender, nuts, fruits, herbs and mineral salts. Prices start at €4.90, average about €7.50 and, except with the gift baskets that include up to eight items, do not tend to be much more than this.
Barruntando Ceramics, Avilés (Asturias)
Although based in Spain's 'Royal' region on the northern coast, the group of women who make up Barruntando come from all over the country, but are all good friends with a passion for pottery who clubbed together.
Their collective preference is for rustic items, hand-painted, typically miniatures of cute animals and birds, but also practical items modelled on these – like handy little bowls designed to hold a ball of wool with a 'notch' for the loose end, so you can knit or crochet without dropping the yarn on the floor and seeing it unravel all over the house or become a new toy for the cat (see photograph 3, right). Magnets, cactus pots, little bowls for putting odds and ends in, little ornaments, and even a vampire bat pendant, based on Beatrix Potter-style animals with sweet little faces typically sell at between €28 and €49, and each takes at least five days to make – as the women describe in their detailed, six-stage explanation of how they mould, glaze, paint and kiln-fire their one-off pieces.
Tatiana Riego accessories, A Coruña (Galicia)
A mum-and-daughter team – Tatiana is the former and Amanda is the latter – these north-western ladies are passionate about upcycling and theirs started as a hobby which pays, a sideline to Tatiana's day job as an interior designer.
Amanda learned from watching her mother at work, and they now operate as a team from their base in A Coruña, designing and making a highly-eclectic bunch of hard-to-classify accessories (see picture 2, right).
“We don't use any machines – we work on each piece individually,” says Tatiana.
“And we don't use glue or any materials that might be harmful to health or the environment.”
Dried-flower bouquets, fans woven from reeds, plant-based room-sprays, olive-oil soap, tote bags, shoppers, mobile phone bags and makeup bags made from leather and jute, keyrings, candles, even a manual wooden lemon-squeezer, a mug, cotton dress, a waterproof poncho, a necklace, a pair of earrings and a leather apron are among their collection, with prices ranging from €9.90 to €76.
Promise Designs jewellery, Alicante
A multi-national team, Roxane Johnson and Raúl Espinosa said from the start they wanted their hand-crafted jewellery to be 'personalised, individual, of sentimental value and made with lots of love', and indeed, everything in their range is tailored to the customer and created without using any mechanical means.
Every budget is catered for and only precious metal is used – at the lower end, sterling silver (always stamped with the requisite 925), and at the upper end, 9ct red gold, white gold, yellow gold, via 24ct yellow-gold plated on silver and 18ct rose-gold plated on silver (see photograph 4, right).
“Promise Designs began with a love story – between a Spanish man and an Englishwoman who met for the first time beneath a rainy London sky,” the couple says.
“We both had extensive experience in jewellery manufacturing for other companies, but we wanted to start something of our own, something together.”
They began just by making attractive, thoughtful pieces for friends and family, then their business started to grow – and, six years on, now with a rapidly-expanding customer base, they made the same leap of faith many of us have: To swap the land of Shakespeare for that of Cervantes.
At their studio in the east-coast city of Alicante, they create things of beauty almost to order, engraved, in letters, in numbers, in hearts and other shapes, or anything that means something special to the gifter and the giftee.
Clearly, prices vary considerably depending upon whether you want to go full 24-carat or sterling silver, and also by weight, quantity, shape and number of letters to be engraved; broadly, they range from around €28 to €395.
Lilian Urquieta leathers, La Herradura (Granada province)
She's a designer and her other half, Iñaki, is an accessories manufacturer by trade, so together, they make a great pair. As well as handbags in every colour (see photograph 3, left) to match your glad-rags, the two of them design and hand-stitch purses, wallets, passport-holders, elegant and decorative head bands – of the type you'd wear at a wedding, instead of a fascinator - camera straps, guitar straps, leather-bound diaries, glasses cases, and even bicycle saddle-bags, all in leather, suede or both, some with multi-coloured Aztec-patterned stitching, as well as the summer 2020 all-the-rage 'basket bags' with leather trim.
Each item is either stamped with, or embossed with, the designer's name, so if she ever becomes world-famous, they'll fetch you a fortune on eBay.
Prices start at around €34 to €38 for camera straps, purses and wallets, bags average at about €90 but come in from around €48 to €230 depending upon colour, size and uniqueness of design.
“We're surrounded by inspiration – living near the mountains and the sea influences the shapes and colours of our designs,” Lilian says.
Debosc designs in wood, Anglès (Girona province, Catalunya)
'Simple but effective' sums up this Costa Brava family's works; another accurate description of them is, “I wish I'd invented that.”
Lluís (dad), Teia (mum), Eva (big sister) and Raquel (little sister) create stuff that's so useful you can't believe this is the first time you've ever seen it. Things you didn't know you needed, but which, now you've discovered them, you realise your life could have been made so much easier all these years if you'd come across them before. And they make you want to write this clan of woodworkers a thank-you letter for solving all your problems.
For example, there's a great way to hang your keys up in an ordered way that guarantees you'll find them when you want them and they'll never be tangled up: An elongated block attached to the wall with a horizontal groove right across it, which you stick the keyring or the actual key itself into. Or a wooden prop that fits under your laptop to tilt the keyboard so your hands and wrists are in the right position for typing, preventing repetitive strain injury (RSI), probably the world's most common 'office ailment' along with eye-strain and backache.
A very basic-looking slot-frame that stands upright on your desk, just big enough to pop your mobile phone into, means you can watch the screen without holding it in your hands, and a slightly larger one for a laptop, netbook or tablet which, as it's upright, saves space. And an e-book or tablet support in the shape of an easel, so you can read or watch a film on it without either holding it or having to bend double over it, giving you a permanently sore neck, upper back and shoulders (yet another ubiquitous 'office injury').
But what we love the most of all is the 'armchair tray'. You know when you're flopped into the sofa with a cuppa, and have nowhere to put it, so you pop it on the floor and then (a) kick it over when you've forgotten it's there, (b) the cat/dog knocks it over to get your attention, or (c) the cat/dog drinks it, and you discover it's empty just when the best bit of the film on TV comes up and you don't want to have to move to refill it?
Well, Debosc's wooden tray, made from strips of wood with a fabric base, simply moulds itself to the sofa arm and, as the top remains flat, your cup can sit on it unspilled and undisturbed. (As long as you remember it's there before you stretch out and put your head down, of course).
Here's the icing: It rolls up after use, so you can stuff it down the side of a cushion, under the sofa or even in a cutlery drawer, and takes up a fraction of the space of a 'standard' tea-tray.
At €35, the 'Detray' is not cheap, but then, it's carved and slotted together entirely by hand, and it's plated with proper, good-quality wood – oak, maple, cherry or wengue – on a base of birch wood, so it's hard-wearing and very elegant (see photograph 4, left).
“We like designing useful products,” says the family behind Debosc.
“And we don't care how long it takes us – we make the blueprints and carry out all the necessary tests until we're happy with the result.
“It's all about finding a simple, minimalistic and, obviously, attractive accessory that's also practical.”
Lluís is the 'wood expert' and does the marketing; Teia is the problem-solver and the 'seamstress', the practical one of the foursome who gives everything the final touches and packages them up; Raquel is PR and brand manager, and Eva deals with the website and social media.
“As for the design, creation, making, and selling of our products, we all work (argue, wear each other out, get overly-enthusiastic) together, because there's plenty of work to share out between us!” the family concludes.
Related Topics
TRAVELLING around Spain is safe – as long as you stick to regulations and recommendations in place for everyone's benefit – and everywhere in the country that makes even a fraction of its money from tourism is keen to have you back.
But it's going to be a slow summer, as many of those who would be planning their holidays right now are still a little nervous about taking themselves off somewhere they have not been able to actually see through their window in lockdown, be it the next town, next province, halfway across the country, or even into international territory if you're thinking of travelling to Spain from another part of the world.
Still, while you're overcoming your natural initial nerves and weighing up whether to take the plunge, why not take a 'tour' of Spain from your own home to see what you're missing? We bet you'll soon realise you can't keep away and be booking yourself a trip before you've had time to talk yourself out of it.
One unusual and enlightening way to 'visit' Spain – and definitely worth following up in person, not just online – is by setting off on a circuit of the country's arts and crafts.
Pre-pandemic, the best possible route would have been trawling round the Mediaeval markets that crop up between January and approximately Easter all over the country, packed with colourful stalls full of handicrafts and decorative items and traditional foodstuffs from different regions, and which are exciting enough just to browse and mop up the atmosphere, even if you don't spend any money. But of course, any due to take place from around early March would have been called off – hopefully, we'll be out of the woods and they'll be back on the streets by the beginning of next year.
In the meantime, check out 'The Handmade Tour'. Beautiful, imaginative and often highly-practical items, lovingly created from scratch, are starting to become something of a trademark of the area their makers come from, especially as local and regional culture and history frequently creeps into their design.
And they'll inspire you to want to see the areas they originate from with your own eyes, too.
The tale behind the Handmade Tour
Pictures and testimonials of workshops, studios, products and landscape, urban and rural, mountains and coast, from north to south, captured on screen by top Spanish photographer Paco Marín show a real and living image of Spain's artistic talent, which regularly draws on traditional crafts and trades that a given area would have lived off until centuries, or even just decades, ago.
You get a backstage tour of the working process which makes you feel as though you're at the heart of it, drawn into the centre, in a way that rarely happens with mass-produced goods in mainstream shops – and you can guarantee you'll be viewing, and perhaps buying, something that you would not stumble across anywhere else.
This is all part of online retailer Amazon's drive to get sole traders and small businesses on the world map – once, a local shop's custom would be limited to people who lived in the same town and dropped by in person, or at least, to visitors to the area if they were based in a tourist belt, but nowadays, even these family-run little units can export their goods thanks to Amazon Marketplace. For this reason – as well as the thousands of new jobs created by its ever-growing network of distribution and logistics hubs in the country – Amazon's landing in Spain in 2011 and its ongoing multi-million investment in the country has been a great help to the economy and enabled small-time entrepreneurs to 'go global'.
Now, Amazon Handmade does the same, but with traders who make their own, bespoke goods – everything from jewellery to soap – and although the scheme has been running since 2016, supporting over 50,000 craftsmen and craftswomen in 80 countries via its domains in the USA, Canada, México, the UK, France, Germany and Italy, it has only been operating in Spain since last month.
“Here at Amazon, we invest millions of dollars every year to help small businesses worldwide,” says the global manager for the new Handmade Tour, Katie Harnetiaux.
“We're committed to empowering craftspeople, sharing their products and telling their personal stories.
“We celebrate each and every one of their different creation and manufacturing techniques, from the deeply-traditional to the most modern.”
La Cosmética de María, Villasana de Mena (Burgos province, Castilla y León)
María Gómez now lives in Bilbao, in the Basque Country, but is originally from the province of Burgos, famous worldwide for the spectacular gothic cathedral in its capital city of the same name.
She started 'experimenting' at home and trying out her 'recipes' on friends and family, and now, after 'many trials, tests and versions', her vast range of delicious-smelling toiletries, made with 100% natural ingredients and no chemicals, are selling by the bucketload.
With an average rating of 4.8 stars out of five, María's collection includes purifying face soap made from clay, rose and cocoa; 'solid' shampoos for different types of hair – they come in bar-of-soap format, so no spillage (see photograph 2, left), and she even does a conditioner in the same shape – organic bath salts, tiger balm, all-purpose balm, heat pads, mixed gift baskets, and more, all in a variety of aromas and using plant-based mixtures such as coffee, cinnamon, lavender, nuts, fruits, herbs and mineral salts. Prices start at €4.90, average about €7.50 and, except with the gift baskets that include up to eight items, do not tend to be much more than this.
Barruntando Ceramics, Avilés (Asturias)
Although based in Spain's 'Royal' region on the northern coast, the group of women who make up Barruntando come from all over the country, but are all good friends with a passion for pottery who clubbed together.
Their collective preference is for rustic items, hand-painted, typically miniatures of cute animals and birds, but also practical items modelled on these – like handy little bowls designed to hold a ball of wool with a 'notch' for the loose end, so you can knit or crochet without dropping the yarn on the floor and seeing it unravel all over the house or become a new toy for the cat (see photograph 3, right). Magnets, cactus pots, little bowls for putting odds and ends in, little ornaments, and even a vampire bat pendant, based on Beatrix Potter-style animals with sweet little faces typically sell at between €28 and €49, and each takes at least five days to make – as the women describe in their detailed, six-stage explanation of how they mould, glaze, paint and kiln-fire their one-off pieces.
Tatiana Riego accessories, A Coruña (Galicia)
A mum-and-daughter team – Tatiana is the former and Amanda is the latter – these north-western ladies are passionate about upcycling and theirs started as a hobby which pays, a sideline to Tatiana's day job as an interior designer.
Amanda learned from watching her mother at work, and they now operate as a team from their base in A Coruña, designing and making a highly-eclectic bunch of hard-to-classify accessories (see picture 2, right).
“We don't use any machines – we work on each piece individually,” says Tatiana.
“And we don't use glue or any materials that might be harmful to health or the environment.”
Dried-flower bouquets, fans woven from reeds, plant-based room-sprays, olive-oil soap, tote bags, shoppers, mobile phone bags and makeup bags made from leather and jute, keyrings, candles, even a manual wooden lemon-squeezer, a mug, cotton dress, a waterproof poncho, a necklace, a pair of earrings and a leather apron are among their collection, with prices ranging from €9.90 to €76.
Promise Designs jewellery, Alicante
A multi-national team, Roxane Johnson and Raúl Espinosa said from the start they wanted their hand-crafted jewellery to be 'personalised, individual, of sentimental value and made with lots of love', and indeed, everything in their range is tailored to the customer and created without using any mechanical means.
Every budget is catered for and only precious metal is used – at the lower end, sterling silver (always stamped with the requisite 925), and at the upper end, 9ct red gold, white gold, yellow gold, via 24ct yellow-gold plated on silver and 18ct rose-gold plated on silver (see photograph 4, right).
“Promise Designs began with a love story – between a Spanish man and an Englishwoman who met for the first time beneath a rainy London sky,” the couple says.
“We both had extensive experience in jewellery manufacturing for other companies, but we wanted to start something of our own, something together.”
They began just by making attractive, thoughtful pieces for friends and family, then their business started to grow – and, six years on, now with a rapidly-expanding customer base, they made the same leap of faith many of us have: To swap the land of Shakespeare for that of Cervantes.
At their studio in the east-coast city of Alicante, they create things of beauty almost to order, engraved, in letters, in numbers, in hearts and other shapes, or anything that means something special to the gifter and the giftee.
Clearly, prices vary considerably depending upon whether you want to go full 24-carat or sterling silver, and also by weight, quantity, shape and number of letters to be engraved; broadly, they range from around €28 to €395.
Lilian Urquieta leathers, La Herradura (Granada province)
She's a designer and her other half, Iñaki, is an accessories manufacturer by trade, so together, they make a great pair. As well as handbags in every colour (see photograph 3, left) to match your glad-rags, the two of them design and hand-stitch purses, wallets, passport-holders, elegant and decorative head bands – of the type you'd wear at a wedding, instead of a fascinator - camera straps, guitar straps, leather-bound diaries, glasses cases, and even bicycle saddle-bags, all in leather, suede or both, some with multi-coloured Aztec-patterned stitching, as well as the summer 2020 all-the-rage 'basket bags' with leather trim.
Each item is either stamped with, or embossed with, the designer's name, so if she ever becomes world-famous, they'll fetch you a fortune on eBay.
Prices start at around €34 to €38 for camera straps, purses and wallets, bags average at about €90 but come in from around €48 to €230 depending upon colour, size and uniqueness of design.
“We're surrounded by inspiration – living near the mountains and the sea influences the shapes and colours of our designs,” Lilian says.
Debosc designs in wood, Anglès (Girona province, Catalunya)
'Simple but effective' sums up this Costa Brava family's works; another accurate description of them is, “I wish I'd invented that.”
Lluís (dad), Teia (mum), Eva (big sister) and Raquel (little sister) create stuff that's so useful you can't believe this is the first time you've ever seen it. Things you didn't know you needed, but which, now you've discovered them, you realise your life could have been made so much easier all these years if you'd come across them before. And they make you want to write this clan of woodworkers a thank-you letter for solving all your problems.
For example, there's a great way to hang your keys up in an ordered way that guarantees you'll find them when you want them and they'll never be tangled up: An elongated block attached to the wall with a horizontal groove right across it, which you stick the keyring or the actual key itself into. Or a wooden prop that fits under your laptop to tilt the keyboard so your hands and wrists are in the right position for typing, preventing repetitive strain injury (RSI), probably the world's most common 'office ailment' along with eye-strain and backache.
A very basic-looking slot-frame that stands upright on your desk, just big enough to pop your mobile phone into, means you can watch the screen without holding it in your hands, and a slightly larger one for a laptop, netbook or tablet which, as it's upright, saves space. And an e-book or tablet support in the shape of an easel, so you can read or watch a film on it without either holding it or having to bend double over it, giving you a permanently sore neck, upper back and shoulders (yet another ubiquitous 'office injury').
But what we love the most of all is the 'armchair tray'. You know when you're flopped into the sofa with a cuppa, and have nowhere to put it, so you pop it on the floor and then (a) kick it over when you've forgotten it's there, (b) the cat/dog knocks it over to get your attention, or (c) the cat/dog drinks it, and you discover it's empty just when the best bit of the film on TV comes up and you don't want to have to move to refill it?
Well, Debosc's wooden tray, made from strips of wood with a fabric base, simply moulds itself to the sofa arm and, as the top remains flat, your cup can sit on it unspilled and undisturbed. (As long as you remember it's there before you stretch out and put your head down, of course).
Here's the icing: It rolls up after use, so you can stuff it down the side of a cushion, under the sofa or even in a cutlery drawer, and takes up a fraction of the space of a 'standard' tea-tray.
At €35, the 'Detray' is not cheap, but then, it's carved and slotted together entirely by hand, and it's plated with proper, good-quality wood – oak, maple, cherry or wengue – on a base of birch wood, so it's hard-wearing and very elegant (see photograph 4, left).
“We like designing useful products,” says the family behind Debosc.
“And we don't care how long it takes us – we make the blueprints and carry out all the necessary tests until we're happy with the result.
“It's all about finding a simple, minimalistic and, obviously, attractive accessory that's also practical.”
Lluís is the 'wood expert' and does the marketing; Teia is the problem-solver and the 'seamstress', the practical one of the foursome who gives everything the final touches and packages them up; Raquel is PR and brand manager, and Eva deals with the website and social media.
“As for the design, creation, making, and selling of our products, we all work (argue, wear each other out, get overly-enthusiastic) together, because there's plenty of work to share out between us!” the family concludes.
Related Topics
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