MAKERS | THE AMERICAS | COLOMBIA | TEXTILES

Lucía Echavarría | Designer

 


Lucía Echavarría founded Magnetic Midnight, her accessory brand as a way to approach Colombian crafts through a whimsical and contemporary aesthetic. After a decade, her query into traditional techniques demanded a change of scale: last year she presented her first furniture collection, Magnetic Midnight Maison, for which she put together different Colombian artisanal techniques to create unique pieces made by local communities. Lucía Echavarría has also designed an exclusive range of hand-woven home pieces in collaboration with Cabana.

 

 

How did you begin?

"I always loved crafts. I think I’ve been very influenced by my surroundings growing up: my mother is an architect and both my parents collected textiles and traditional arts. It was something that we put our attention into, being able to understand culture through objects. That’s why, to me, crafts are a way to connect with Colombia. Maybe furniture-making wasn’t something that I necessarily envisioned myself doing… I started with costume design and the headpieces. The way it evolved, was really about the possibility of using more traditional techniques and materials."

How did you learn? 

"Making my accessories by hand was really self-taught, but when they became more elaborate, I took an embroidery class at École Lesage, in Paris. I worked with weavers, but the one-of-a-kind pieces I invented myself. When I got the idea of doing furniture, I was interested in inlaying work into wood, so I took a course at the Santo Domingo School of Arts and Crafts, in Bogotá, where I studied with one of the country’s inlay masters, Ivan Socha. He’s actually one of the artisans I worked with in my own collection. I’ve learnt a lot about the techniques from the makers themselves; you have to understand how the craft works."

 

 

How do you plan, prepare and create your works?

"The furniture collection took me three years to research and make prototypes. I had to find the appropriate workshops and get to know the collaborators. How we worked is that every artisan workshop made an element with their own technique and material, that belongs to their community and region, and they sent it to us in Bogota, where I worked with one upholster, two woodworkers and someone who forges iron, in order to piece everything together.

"We didn’t want the communities to finish each other’s work directly: that would’ve been a whole different process… A very interesting one, maybe for the future. But this time we wanted to have better control of how the piece would look like. The process will take time whenever I try to work with a new craft, but if it’s just variations of what I have already used, it would be quicker. Even so, I do think that things take time; it is important allow time to think, sometimes people do things too quickly."

What does a typical day look like?

"I have a studio in Bogotá, but my days vary: I can spend the morning drawing and looking at different materials, or I can also go from workshop to workshop, in the outskirts of the city. In assembling the collection, I’ve visited some artisans in various parts of Colombia. The first period of research allowed me to see different parts of the country, encounter diverse landscapes and meet the communities I was to work with and their families. This means visiting places that are not necessarily touristic, but are interesting spots for crafts and authenticity, like Usiacurí in the Atlantic Coast, where the iraca palm is worked; or San Jacinto, a car-drive away from Cartagena, where they make hammocks."

 

Who or what most inspires you?

Traveling is always the biggest source of inspiration. A lot of the ideas that went in the collection were taken from textiles or patterns that I’ve seen. There’s inspiration from Italy, Uzbekistan, India and Japan, for example. Home is also a great source of inspiration for me. Verde Visconti designed my father’s house: the way she mixed textures and her color palette is a big inspiration for me.    

One more thing… An Artist you’d collect if you could?

Olga de Amaral, Sheila Hicks and Ani Albers. I love textile artists.

 

 

Interview by Rebeca Vaisman
Images from Magnetic Midnight

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