48 HOURS IN BARCELONA

48 Hours in Barcelona
Thriving manufacturing culture

2 days in Barcelona starting at the Marset showroom to see their lights and hear about the business heritage and philosophy over lunch. Loved the skinny Miro-like Copérnica floor lamps, surprised by the range of materials – veneer and resin, ceramic – and impressed by the versatility of these designs that work anywhere.

Next stop the beautiful huge white-dusted box that is the Apparatu workshop for a speed-demo of the process from clay in bags through casting, polishing, firing, glazing, firing again, a labour of love indeed.

In a couple of hours I have met 2 family businesses succeeding by evolving with successive generations adding different layers of skill & sensibility and finding new markets. Interesting also that Barcelona has a thriving manufacturing culture fuelled by centrally located viable production space plus locally-sourced materials and people to design, make and support.

As usual I'm wondering why we don't seem very good at this in the UK, and I'd be interested to know to what extent Spanish central and local government and maybe EU policy drives this.