Gabriel Escámez, the folk designer – Technologist

Gabriel Escámez has set up his base behind a discreet black garage door in Sant Martí, a post-industrial neighborhood of Barcelona that has been transformed into a residential area. The founder of Cobalto Studio recently opened part of this space to the public, inaugurating La Cobalta, a label prodcuing clothing, jewelry, stoneware plates, sculptural earthenware jugs and rugs.

The selection of objects is inspired by the Mediterranean basin, just like the decorative style the interior designer has been working on for the last decade, combining lime, organic shapes, raffia – and cobalt blue, which gives his studio its name. “For La Cobalta, I go in search of crafts that have fallen into disuse, such as lost wax, which we revive. We also publish, for example, large, 600-page books on the folk traditions of the Balearic Islands, which took five years to research, or lamps, some of which I designed, inspired by the poetry of Federico García Lorca [1898-1936].”

Gabriel Escámez was born 37 years ago in Sitges, 35 kilometers south of Barcelona. Far from the tourist clichés of the Costa Daurada, this historic seaside resort has preserved its character, with its 19^th-century houses and facades and its Museu del Cau Ferrat devoted to popular and decorative arts as well as fine art. The museum, where a collection of domestic irons stands alongside paintings by Maurice Utrillo and Pablo Picasso, had a lasting influence on Escámez.

‘Stripping of the superfluous’

After studying interior architecture at Deià, Barcelona’s art and design school, the young Spaniard embarked on a career as an art director, orchestrating photo shoots for the fashion industry. He also assembled a collection of chairs, which he rented out for shoots and videos (“I’m obsessed with chairs, I own over 2,000 of them!”), before his penchant for history and design took over once and for all.

When Escámez, who says he feels “at once Mediterranean, Catalan and also Spanish, because I’m fascinated by the movement of flamenco dancers,” first started out 10 years ago, the Mediterranean aesthetic was still “looked down on” as being too kitsch. To turn it into a major trend in today’s decorating, it had to be adjusted to the styles of the time: “We have to retain the warm, reassuring spirit of the old, through the tiles, fabrics, clay and strip it of the superfluous. The beauty of folklore, in the original sense of the word, is that it adapts in form while retaining its meaning,” said the decorator.

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