Collection by Amanda Dameron
Barcelona, Day Two
On our second day in Barcelona, fueled by café con leche and enough jamon to kill a horse, we excitedly settled into a breakneck tour of modern Catalan design and architecture. From Gaudi and Dali to Mariscal and Alvarez, our Barcelona education continues in earnest.
Inside the Dali Suite, there's a Roman bath that's original to the building. I've never seen anything like it—you can fill it up with water and make a little mini swimming pool. The hotel director said that the bath alcove had been boarded up for several decades, and they weren't even aware that it was there. All of the tile was in excellent condition, even though it's over ninety years old.
I guess the Roman bath was quite a hit with Dali—here's a photograph of the artist, enjoying the space with two young friends. Next time you're in Barcelona and you have $8,845 burning a hole in your pocket, feel free to book the two-bedroom suite and try to figure out how Dali got that horse up the hotel's main staircase.
After our surreal walk down memory lane, we stopped at the Gastón y Daniela showroom, located in a lovely nineteenth-century building near the Palace hotel. The textile purveyor, established in 1876, has long represented Spain in the world of high quality fabrics, and has a huge archive of patterns that run the gamut from staunchly traditional to reinvigorated classics. One such example is Sidonia, left, an updated version of 14th-century decorative element found in a cathedral in Bilbao.
One of the highlights of the trip as been the opportunity to catch the last day of the exhibition Mariscal en la Pedrera, a retrospective of the Spanish designer's work over the last forty years. The only thing better than seeing an exhibit of work that you admire is seeing it accompanied by the artist himself. Here is Javier Mariscal at the entrance to the exhibition, surrounded by a hanging forest of sketches that date back to the 1960s.
One of my favorite pieces in the showroom was also one of the most recently introduced—the 2010 Scantling floor lamp by London designer Mathias Hahn. From the secret drawings of an upcoming collaboration with a young up-and-coming lighting design trio in Brooklyn to its just-opened Chelsea showroom, Marset is about to become a major player in the US market.
We capped our tour of the showroom with an impressive spread of Catalan specialties—Jamón ibérico, pan y tomate, Carxofes fregides (fried artichokes), croquetes, and of course the ubiquitous olive oil contained in a decanter by Rafael Marquina. We happily stuffed our faces, and then returned to our hotel to prepare for another day exploring Barcelona's modern design heritage.
To read more about our Barcelona tour, click
here.