Heimat Atlantic Braid Bags with Sargadelos fetishes that give luck

Sargadelos Amulets Protect these Portuguese Junco Bags braided by hand.Heimat Atlantic has managed to make the best crafts on the north coast in half the world fashionable.His next challenge: to publicize the work of Los Coleiras de O Grove.

That was the summer of heartbreak, but ended in crush.Montserrat Álvarez (A Coruña, September 3, 1986) went on vacation in 2014 with a friends to Ericeira, Portugal, and bought a bag in a market, normal.Handmade, with a complex plot of flowers, paid for him just 30 euros.He sewn a fetish from Sargadelos, the biser designed by Isaac Díaz Pardo for those looking for love, who had been hung around his neck, pure Galician realism.

Back to Paris, where she worked no less than as director of the office of the designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, they stopped her on the street to ask where she had bought it.Guided by intuition, he thought: "And yes...".The next two years happened looking for suppliers and skis hands in the braided, a task that is not easy because the bad paid crafts had won them, until he found Celeste da Silva and the loom was launched, without a pedal, to an arm.

The first run was 100 bags that she sewed with her mother;Some friends of her gave her a gallery in Paris for one day to present them and only three left without selling.Confirmed: people had fallen in love as much as she of her combination of Atlantic crafts.And yes, he pumpkin to the Bouroullec.

Laugh."I endured a year and peak doing both, but there came a time when I could not.I remember riding his exhibition in Rennes and at the same time supervise the arrival of merchandise to Colette from Pontevedra, "confesses this art historian (specialized in fashion) and architecture (for sorbonne), which made a curriculum in Rome as commissioner ofexhibitions, and now walks with one foot in the United States.

Atlantic crafts

From the age of 19, seeing the world as a good Galician, which explains the name of his project."Heimat is a word that only exists in the German language, like Morriña, and which means where one feels at home".The Atlantic last name refers to its scope of action: the promotion of knowledge of the North Coast.Because theirs is not just selling bags, in any case with a price according to the hours used in its preparation.

With chosen points of sale (Barneys in New York, Dover Street Market Ginza in Tokyo or the Online Matchesfashion.com), implies them in the work of making known the traceability of a unique product that appreciate outside our borders, especially in Asia."In Japan they greatly appreciate the handmade.They consider crafts a treasure that is part of the inheritance to their children, ”he says admired.

His latest Junco design is a collaboration with Comme Des Garçons, a signature Top rendered to Galician charm and the quality of the pieces."When they saw the leather background that the bags carry were surprised.It is from a very powerful firm of Ubrique, Gino Vittorio, who believes in the project and attends a small request like ours of linings and closures ".

So care, method and detail of a historian, in a necessarily small production because it takes a month and a half to make each bag: junction, dye and braided, hand -sewn, embolized in cotton bags...The final assembly is done in Pontevedra, also the sewing of the Sargadelos Amulets: the carnival festive mask, the hands that protect the money, the fetish to find love..."Yes, yes, people ask me for advice on which one to buy," says funny Álvarez.

His new, or rather old, adventure is jewelry.He had been wanting to work with Los Coleiras de O Grove, another artisan tradition that had remained as a tourist and that Álvarez has set out to put in the place he deserves.With them I had already created the most marine version of their bags, the Shella Bag.

Now, together with Montse Betanzos (third generation in the office learned from his mother, Socorro), he has created necklaces that recover the traditional work with Nácar and Conchas, and for which he has recruited Maison Deras, from the Chanel Métiers D 'group.Art, which performs the jewel closure inspired by the Irish claddagh ring, a symbol of friendship and love.In Heimat Atlantic nothing is casual.They create talismans.

Recovered trade

Asking here and there, Montserrat Álvarez found Celeste da Silva.This Portuguese, 62, learned at 8 to braid the Briznas de Junco with his mother and is an example of the conservation philosophy of Heimat Atlantic: he had a loom in the house garage, now he uses eight people in his Juncal workshop (Portugal).

Álvarez, who collaborates with the Foundation of Crafts and Design of Galicia, explains.It is part of the artisan's valorization process, which includes the commercial component.If we want these trades to persist, you have to pay a fair price.If not, people have to leave ".