#10 CALIU MILANO – GEMMA MARGALEF (ENG)
For years, Gemma Margalef had been dreaming of starting to produce her own lamp line, but quite understandably she was also wondering whether she’d be able to sustain herself with it. Then in 2018, the company she had been working full time for went through some major organizational changes, which made Gemma view her future in a new light, and she ended up deciding to take the leap: “This is the moment.”
She didn’t start completely from scratch though. Doing crafts with yarns had always been sort of a tradition among the women of the family, and it had been that for Gemma too, but something to do mainly for herself. Also, given that the lamps in the market always had something Gemma didn’t like—either the shape was wrong or the light they emitted didn’t satisfy her—she had made plenty of lamps for all the apartments she had been living in, with old lampshade frames she found, and with different kinds of materials, “like pipes and textiles and such,” she recalls. That past made sure that she already had a some kind of notion of what the actual lamp making business would require.
When Gemma decided to launch her career as a lamp designer for real, she remembered the lamps that in Spanish are called lamparas tejidas, woven lamps. Gemma started to do some research for this specific technique, and that research brought back a memory of having seen in 2010 in her original hometown Barcelona, in a store of the Spanish shoe brand Camper, lamps that had caught her attention already back then. Camper had hired Spanish artist and designer Curro Claret to design lamps using Camper’s old shoelaces, and Claret had tied the colorful laces around metallic lampshade frames, creating a uniform surface for the shades. Now, many years later, Gemma discovered that the technique of lamparas tejidas that Claret had applied to the lamps dated back to Mexico in the 1950s, and several designers and brands use it still; it has been used for example—and arguably the most famously—in the “Acapulco chair”, but also in wall panels and other objects.
Right from the start it was clear to Gemma that she wanted to be as sustainable as possible: “I don’t use any adhesives or paints, so the product is 100% recyclable, also because the frames are made of iron, the most recyclable material in the world.” Gemma is also proud that her product is “100% made in Italy”; she purchases the frames from artisans in Lombardy (the region Milan belongs to), and the yarns are procured from selected textile companies located in the area of a small Northern Italian town called Biella. The specialty of the yarns is, that besides being of course recyclable they are actually regenerated—indeed one of the elements that had impressed Gemma in the lamps made by Claret for Camper was the reuse of disused materials—which means that the yarns are made of leftovers of the materials that the companies use in their production. That leftover material is divided by color, dipped in sinks with products that makes it melt a bit, and then the resulting product is spun again in yarns, “in order not to waste any material”.
Along with finding the right suppliers, Gemma also found a place for making her lamps; a small commercial space at street level in the Porta Romana area serves both as a shop for the production as well as a simple showroom. Somewhere along the way she chose the name for her brand, Caliu Milano: “It was very important for me to pick a Catalan word, and combine it with ‘Milano’, which is the city where I live now. Caliu means a sort of an atmosphere; it’s not anything tangible. When the Catalans say that “there was a good caliu”, they are describing a situation at someone’s home, in a restaurant, at a party, at an exhibition, where the people were nice, the atmosphere was good, the temperature was right, and so on. So, because my lampshades create a very soft and welcoming light, I chose this Catalan word for my brand.” With everything set, Gemma set to work, and started selling her lamps.
Then came the pandemic. Gemma’s business being a commercial activity, she was allowed to go to her shop every day, traveling through the empty city in subway. Gemma was one of the lucky ones, the period was actually a very good one for her; as many remember, during the lockdown the people who had the fortune of not being ill nor being overly worried for their loved ones often spent their abundant time at home ordering things from the internet. Like furniture and other items for home. Like lamps. Like lamps made by Gemma.
Despite the “sales boom” among private clients of that period, the majority of Gemma’s clients consists of architects, both in Italy and abroad, who order the lamps for their clients: “The architects usually have a very clear idea of what they want, and they send me reference material of the spaces the lamps would go to. We then decide the colors together.”
However, that act of deciding together applies especially to private clients. “For 15 years, I worked for an operative marketing company, where I did research on consumers—that is all of us, when we enter in a store, in a supermarket—and I realized that when we go shopping, we’re piloted really a lot. Even though you’re convinced that you’re choosing a product by yourself, you’re actually steered to purchase a certain item.” Now Gemma wants to avoid any such leading: “I want the client to be part of the process of deciding how their lamp will be made, for both the shape and the colors.”
When Gemma receives an order, she first tries to get an understanding of what the client’s taste is like, and what colors there are in the space where the lampshades will be placed, “in order to create color harmony in that space”. She then suggests the client some colors; perhaps after finding inspiration in design magazines but sometimes also in fashion magazines. One of Gemma’s main tools is a book called Repertoire de couleurs, first published in 1905, that contains 1,385 tones of all the colors, with explanations for where the color can be found in the “real world”, and possible alternative names as well as translations in German, English, Spanish and Italian. In many cases the colors have been derived from plants and flowers, but there’s also for example gold with its nuances, and much more.
You would think that choosing a color isn’t that hard; you just pick the color or colors you like, and that’s it, right? Well, not so fast. Besides the difference between one color and another, and the different nuances of a given color, there’s also a difference depending on what a given color or its nuance is being combined to. The eye perceives a color in a different manner depending on whether it’s against a black or a white background as well as what colors it’s combined to. So, Gemma compares some combinations before deciding what to suggest to the client.
After the shape and the color have been chosen, Gemma starts wrapping the yarn around the frame, making sure that the lines are straight, and that the yarns form an even surface and won’t overlap or cross each other. After finishing the lamp, Gemma tests it with a light bulb, and then ships it to the client. It usually takes approximately 15-20 hours for Gemma to complete a lamp, but the amount of time certainly depends also on the size of the lamp and on the number of colors and stripes chosen, and creating a lamp can take up to three days. The lamps are completely handmade, and the fact that they are made to order makes every lamp unique.
A small space with a large high table for building the lamps on a peaceful side street in the southern part of Milan is currently all Gemma needs right now. While a certain growth is naturally welcome, Gemma wants to preserve the artisan aspect and uniqueness of her work, distinguishing this way her brand from others who produce this type of lamps industrially; in times of increased order volume Gemma employs carefully selected assistants to help her fill the orders. However, “I don’t want to grow into something really big; I’m perfectly happy like this.”
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