Text in Spanish

Grado2 offers in this web page an interesting work about the design and the industry, whose author is the doctor in Fine Arts, Edmundo Palop Fraile. The title of this monograph, in its second edition, “Origin and evolution of the design an the industry of furniture in Yecla, 1908-1968” is about the design origins of furniture in Yecla and the moment when its beginning takes place, the elements that take part in its development and its possible incidence or contribution to the design that is made in Spain, inside the levantine context and during this time: 1908-1968.

Yecla is located in the north of Murcia, it borders on the south of Valencia, and in the east part, on Castilla La-Mancha. It is 700 metres high from the sea level. It is also known as the “Altiplano”.

The author emphasizes, as simply as possible, the development of the fittings industry in Yecla. The objective is being acquainted with the origin and the way Yecla meets the design, the stages of its evolution, the causes and the procedures that guided its progress. Besides, the meaningful events in sixty years of activity in the fittings industry in Yecla are carefully analysed.

The author thought about the following hypothesis:

• What elements took part in order to develop an industrial process in an agrarian area without raw materials for the furniture manufacturing, and geographically isolated at the end of 19th century?

• How and why did the numerous craftsmen that were in Yecla at the beginning of 1900 develop and get an important industrial structure?

• Who was involved in these craftsmen’s artistic formation and aesthetic?

• What has Yecla contributed to the furniture design in Spain in the above mentioned period?

All these questions are exhaustively studied in this text.

The structure of this publication is organized in ten chapters (116 illustrations, 121 notes at the border of each page), two enclosures and a vast bibliography with over a hundred titles.

The first chapter places the scene of the investigation.

The second one, tries to introduce the reader to the origins of the design and the development of the industry in Yecla.

From the third chapter to the seventh, the investigation is carried out.

The eighth one is about Valencia’s influence in the whole process and evolution of the design.

The ninth chapter describes some of the techniques that are used in the furniture industry in Yecla.

And the 10th is about the business people in Yecla; the chapter ends in a short review of the present-day situation (up to 2000) of the industry, the design, the industrial structure, and the institutions that support them.

These ten chapters end by offering the reader the conclusions of the work done.

The book is easy to read, with no interruptions, so almost the whole graphic information is beside the text. In this case, not only the documents and the graphic information are essential, but they also document exactly the discoveries of the investigation. The illustrations contain the uncovered documents, most of the graphic ones have been made by the own author. The rest of documents are photographs of unpublished furniture illustrations as well as some other sketches, all of them described by Edmundo Palop.

The book has had a very good acceptation by the critics. It is important to mention the one in the back cover, by the distinguished Spanish writer, José Luis Castillo-Puche.

The translation of the texts to be received asking for more information will cause a delay in the answer of Grado2.