For us, Taller Piccolo is more than just our company; it's a consequence of our way of life. All the ideas, concerns, and ways of doing things that characterize it already existed before the Workshop came into being. Many of the decisions we make and the paths we've taken are entirely related to who we are, to our skills and limitations first and foremost, but also to how we exist in the world.
Now that this blog is part of our home, we believe it's important to document who the people behind Taller Piccolo are, so that what we do, how ideas emerge, and how they are carried out can be fully understood.
To do this, we're revisiting and expanding a short text we wrote a few months ago, which some of you may have read:
Taller Piccolo is made up of Fran and Ángela. We are Miguel and Eva's parents, architects and full-time artisans.
Fran is a builder of things by nature. He is enormously attracted to the constructive intricacies of objects as disparate as a bicycle, a bridge, a camera, or an airplane. Although he has been listening to and making music all his life, cinema is the discipline he enjoys the most. He is mainly responsible for woodworking and photographing the pieces.
Ángela is observant and detail-oriented. For her, any subtlety is exciting and worthy of analysis. She develops all kinds of crafts and is greatly influenced by the great fashion masters of the 20th century. She is interested in ways of living from a perspective closer to sociology than design. She theorizes tirelessly about the influence of new technologies, sustainability, privacy, customs, and how all this affects the way we relate to our environment. She is mainly responsible for leatherwork, textiles, and graphic design in the workshop.
When we design, we are quite complementary. We don't usually clash or argue because the approach we use is very different. Ángela works from the general, always considering the whole and being careful not to lose sight of the concept when addressing the detailed scale. Fran thinks about how it will be built so that the result reflects naturalness and consistency with the idea. Designing is usually one of our greatest moments as professionals and as a couple.
In our free time, we often do things that indirectly affect our work. We love watching movies, going out to take photos, drawing with the kids, walking, and, most importantly, sharing and discussing what has impressed us about what we've seen or done.
We cannot talk about the Workshop without mentioning our children. It is part of their daily lives, and they have grown up among wood, threads, paints, and screwdrivers. The combination of work and family is the puzzle we play every afternoon.
Miguel is 13 years old and a great, GREAT, conversationalist. He has been passionate about animals since he was very young and uses the outside part of the workshop as a small animal shelter. He is always busy with some house, tunnel, or wooden invention for his guinea pig. For a time, he had a shop during recess selling small wooden figures that he himself turned.
Eva came into the world the same year as the Workshop, in 2013. She is sweet, intrepid, and contemplative in equal parts. She has known no other way of working from her parents, and it shows. At 2 years old, she was already spending hours sitting and cutting colored threads. Now at 7, she is a great artist and has a strong passion: the Pin y Pon world. She spends hours combining clothes, hair, and all kinds of accessories that she creates, organizes, and catalogs. Every afternoon she studies in her small hideaway located under the leather cutting table.
Neither of them is passionate about crafts, but in some way, it is clear that they have grown up near a workshop. We are lucky to be surrounded by a garden, and in the summer, they spend good times there while we work.
We hope these lines serve as an introduction for those who are visiting for the first time. This is just a small introduction to our "sphere." Our intention is to use this blog to share with you this and other references, reflections, and inspirational topics so that you can get a little closer to everything that shapes Taller Piccolo.
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