PALMARIN ARMCHAIR

PALMARIN ARMCHAIR

Ramón Llonch / Artlantique, ESP, 2014

Decommissioned fishing boats: Artlantique transforms the material into contemporary furniture pieces. The salvaged wood and faded surface decoration of each fishing boat is carefully graded, and is then matched to a specific design.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER

Ramón Llonch

Ramón Llonch lives in Barcelona, Spain, and studied textile design and technology in Barcelona, in Biella, Italy, and in Bradford, United Kingdom. He has been working in various European, African and Asian countries as a product design consultant for the apparel and home textiles industry and for the last twenty years he has mainly focused on all features related to added value, from the fibre to the finished fabric.
Some time ago, after some cycling trips to Africa, he became fascinated by the beauty of Senegalese fishing boats and thought that these abandoned floating sculptures could be the raw material he was looking for to create something unique. In a workshop in a fishing village north of Dakar, he reincarnated the wood of these fishing boats into pieces of contemporary design, under the company name Artlantique. After their transformation, these items retain the soul of African life and the story of thousands of miles sailed in the Atlantic Ocean. From this project he learned that even on a small scale design can transform the lives of people. All the pieces of the collection are designed and made in Africa by Africans and are distributed worldwide from a warehouse in Barcelona.
Two years ago he was encouraged by students and teachers at different design universities to add an academic dimension to this project, in order to allow young European students to discover the potential of African creativity and to build a permanent bridge of communication using the common language of creativity.