The high value accessories brand Cucareliquia sets up at LABoral as a company in residence
The Centro de Arte and the company are seeking the interaction of designers, plastic artists and craftspeople in the creative process
Cucareliquia is occupying the LABshop space. Photo: Javier Galán
Cucareliquia España, the high value accessories brand of Asturian origin has joined the Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón as a company in residence, occupying the LABshop space. The residency project is aimed at bringing about the interaction of designers, plastic artists and craftspeople in the creative process, by making available the resources of the art centre and the company: which include the technological tools at FabLAB Asturias or the National Census of Craftspeople, respectively.
For the Company this residency project represents a particularly important step in its consolidation process on account of its training, creative, technological, artistic and cultural content in an environment especially favourable for developing the brand.
The Cucareliquia studio workshop serves as a space for working and customer service, while providing a specific Special Orders Service for creative people, clients and businesses which makes available all the necessary tools to produce unique and exclusive products combining design, technology and a high value and quality production. Additionally, the studio workshop will soon have activities and resources aimed at giving visibility to high value national products and the vast Spanish artisanal immaterial heritage.
Since it was launched in 2012, Cucareliquia España has focused on quality design and production for which it has a significant headcount of designers led by the makers of the brand, the Gijón-born Héctor Jareño and Adrián Díaz. Also, in its efforts to preserve and foster the huge Spanish craftsmanship heritage, the brand has developed a methodology involving a national research process in order to draw up a National Census of Craftspeople which includes carpenters, upholsterers, porcelain manufacturers and potters, leathersmiths and coppersmiths who take part in the creative process under the guidance of designers and plastic artists.
Its commitment to design, quality and added value have made Cucareliquia España one of the most recognised accessories brands in the country at the same time as consolidating its position on the international market with its presence in Première Classe – Who’s Next in Paris, one of the most important world fairs in the sector in which Cucareliquia España will take part for the first time next January.
LABoral and business residencies
The Business Residencies Project is an initiative by LABoral in collaboration with Parque Científico y Tecnológico de Gijón [Gijón Science and Technology Park] aimed at exploring the benefits which, in different areas, may result from interdisciplinary collaborative work between artists and creators and entrepreneurs and businesspeople, whose activities have traditionally followed separate paths, in order that a real feedback of great benefit to innovation is brought about.
The collaboration is based on the conviction that networking between business fields and those that are not will allow for the pooling of resources in the current economic context and, what is even more important, open up new channels and generate opportunities in both directions.
It is part of the mission of LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón to be the driving force behind cultural industries and it is within this framework that this project lies. LABoral, whose DNA runs through the intersection between art, science, technology and society, while not losing sight of its vocation as a Centre dedicated to research, production and diffusion of new forms of artistic and industrial creation, has also worked in these areas.
With these residencies, LABoral has set itself the goal of going one step beyond and to explore and promote ways of making, thinking up and producing alternatives which result from the introduction of change processes based fundamentally on knowledge exchange and by the sharing of values from diverse backgrounds.
