Video transcription:
Rosa Lladro
President of Lladro
I think that at the moment in Lladro we are experiencing a very rich and positive creative phase because we are lucky to have a team of mainly young sculptors with a very current language, and they bring a completely modern approach to the company.
As well, people from the world of design collaborate too; people who move around and bring us what we want, which is fresh air from the street.
Jaime Hayon
Artistic Advisor, Lladro
I’m Jaime Hayon and I’d like to tell you a bit about my experience with Lladro.
I have always been very concerned, as a designer and creator, with what it is to create with our hands, and conserve the handmade element that exists in this country.
It is impressive when someone comes to the company and realizes that there are young people and people in the IPod era working with porcelain the way people did 200 years ago.
It is an example for industries both in this country and abroad.
Alberto y Pepe
Creative Team, CuldeSac
We are Alberto and Pepe, from the CuldeSac studio, and we are going to explain our experience of working with Lladro.
The Re-Cyclos project concerns one of Lladro’s products, in this case bells and balls.
Every year the bell of the year was changed and people bought them for their Christmas trees, especially in America.
After 25 to 30 years the stock of bells and balls was so big that Lladro decided to recycle them, giving these objects a new life.
Introducing them into contemporary spaces was hard, so with these pieces that connect with a simple click they looked like geometrical pieces from the outside, but inside you could enjoy the Lladro’s essence ;the excellent ornamentation.
Paco Cuesta
Head of Art and Technical Coordination, Lladro:
The creative team is made up of about 40 professionals, sculptors, designers, decorators and ornamentalists, who, supported by a technical team, and through close collaboration, manage to complete the physical form of an ideal in porcelain.
When a project is presented it is done on paper or on some type of image format, but then it has to be transformed to a physical form which will then enable it to be reproduced in porcelain.
Bet Cantallaops
Architect, Saeta Estudi
The collaboration Lladro has with creators outside the company, essentially young and innovative people, is very interesting, especially because it is a way of introducing a modern language into a brand that has a great tradition and history, but actually what it gives it is a new interpretation, a new way of reaching a new audience, without losing the former one.
Jaime Hayon
Porcelain is a very interesting material because it is able to create and be adapted to any idea.
I have used it to make bathrooms, decorative objects, and to create modern art installations.
There’s something magic about porcelain, something other materials don’t have.
Anna y Macarena
Fashion designers, El Delgado Buil
For us the classical style is really what is most modern; it moves in parallel to trends, it will never go out of fashion.
Jaime Hayon
Today we realize that with ideas, by believing in creativity, dialogue and conversation, it is easy to achieve something incredible, and this is based on experimentation and exchange, on knowing oneself, on not demanding but learning.
Jose Santaeulalia
Sculptor, Lladro
From the perspective of a sculptor, the development of the Lladro brand has been progressive but quite clear.
We are a staff of very young sculptors and the values remain the same but aesthetically, my house isn’t decorated like my parents’ or my relatives’ house, we create pieces that people like but that I could put in my house.
I think that this has been noticed a lot, and it will be noticed a lot more.
Bodo Sperlein
Designer
But the experience I gained from working with Lladro obviously touched on was to be actually working with very, very skilful workers, you know, and, I think, it was like, almost like an exchange of gifts. I was bringing a very new look to the company and in exchange they gave me the inside of these amazing skills. I think what I brought to the table was a new vision, what I wanted to do with Lladro was to actually change people’s perception of the product, I wanted to show people through my product porcelain is also a very versatile material. It’s not just used for decorative purpose alone, it can also be used as a useful object. So for me, it was great to look at the beautiful, you know, horses, heads and turn them into bottle stoppers, or to do vases which have a function, but likewise, also being at the same time being very, very sculptural within the Lladro theme.
Susana Rodriguez
Head of the Design Team, Lladro
The design department is a department which is closely related to other creative areas; sculptors, ornamentalists, decoration and technique, and it is the department that develops those objects which are not only decorative figures, but that are functional: lamps, salt cellars, pepper pots, table objects, vases or any decorative item which also has a use.
And it is in this department that the company is investing a lot in innovation.
Inaki y Aitor
Fashion designers, Ailanto
We decided to take some big photos, enlargements, from a natural science museum in Berlin, and mix stuffed animals against nature backgrounds with the animals from the Lladro selection.
What most surprised us in the factory were all the molds each figure has.
Francesc Pons
Interior designer – Design Award for Architecture AD 2008
Our proposal was to take parts of the classical figures, like Bodo, one of the internal collaborators did, and put them in these methacrylate cubes kind of like a piece of jewelry, a very delicate piece that could be broken.
We thought it would be nice to protect it.
Jaime Hayon
Lladro is at the very top of a completely unique vision of porcelain art.
It is revolutionizing it in a very natural way.
Ramon Pla
Head of the Decoration Department, Lladro
An example of innovation through decoration could be the concept of “redeco”.
In their form they are essentially classical pieces, and when this new approach endows them with color and chromatism, and they move towards innovation and creation, which decoration brings to them in this project.
I am really happy to be working on this decoration team because there is room for experimentation.
With this lab, we can research new products, new colors, and that is very exciting.
Clare Page / Harry Richardson
Creative Team, Committee
We tend to have a respect for the romance, the messages that come from Lladro are romantic and hopeful and optimistic, and so much of the contemporary design is about contemporary culture, breaking things down and ruining, not ruining but, you know, tearing everything upside down, taking it apart, and we didn’t want to do that. It wasn’t about deconstructing that, it was just about saying the same message because it is a universal message, but saying it in a contemporary aesthetic, a new aesthetic language. Because I think it is so easy to forget what the classical symbols mean. We just begin to take for granted a classical image, and, so that has to be renewed, but the message can stay the same.
Jaime Hayon
Without creativity, risk, and experimentation we can’t go anywhere.
Pere Ortega/ Gernando Ansorena / Bet Cantallops
Architects, Saeta Estudi
For new generations decorative porcelain can be as interesting as anything else.
In fact, the bibelot, as it was called in the past, is something that everyone has.
The home isn’t really a home if we don’t fill it with small objects, and both decorative porcelain and something more or less modern can have a part in this creation of a home, of the objects we like to look at.
I think that Lladro with its new line, plays an interesting role in this world of objects that people like to look at in their house.
Alberto y Pepe
Nowadays, when everything happens so quickly, when everything is consumed and produced quickly, finding a company of this size that has a product in which time is important, but in an opposite way, it is not about more production, but better production, that each piece is created by so many people in so much time, is going against the grain.
It is the detail, it is not an industrial product; it is craftwork.
Francesc Pons
I love the way everything is so hand-made.
There are only two ways: either very industrial or hand-made production of excellent quality.
Everything in between will disappear and what will remain is the top, and the much cheaper industrial option.
Jaime Hayon
We are recognized internationally, from Tavernes Blanques to Tokyo.
It is due to that natural aspect and know-how, and that has only been created through dialogue.
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