During the international fair of Cevisama has taken place the official presentation of the ceramic collection ‘Esencia Material’, designed by the prestigious interior designer Erico Navazo, one of the most influential designers in Europe, exclusively for APE Grupo.
As its name suggests, ‘Material Essence’ has to do with the authenticity of materials and the solidity of our origins, valuing the expressiveness of the elements we find in nature. In each piece of the collection, the language of clay, plaster and lime, stone, marble, concrete, terrazzo and wood is read emphatically.
In fact, Navazo says that with this collection he has tried to “combine my childhood memories that brought me closer to design and art, and I have done so by valuing the essence of materials, what constitutes the nature of things, with my own essence, with my memories”. For the designer, “it is a very personal collection but, at the same time, transits universal codes that connect with people around the world”.
Navazo’s designs are the result of a deep inner reading with which he intends to reflect his connection with art, his experiences and roots through the material essence. “All these material elements are very functional for everyday, but at the same time they take us to the past, they emerge the memory, so it is a full emotional collection in a very simple and honest way” he adds.
His ceramic collection tells a story, his own, and says it is made with the heart to be able to transmit sensations through the spaces. “The different pieces have in common the love of textures, memories, to do things in a very particular way, as I learned, as I was taught. They have in common the ceramic tradition, how tiles were made before, their artisanal process, the beauty of their imperfections”.
The truth is that the materials in his collection speak the same language: Nature. All the pieces work with each other and in different ways. Some reflect the simple plaster through volumes and geometries, with torn material textures that generate linear and curved geometric motifs that speak for themselves. He has also designed wooden pieces that recover the Japanese technique of Yakisugi, plaster and clay, and on them he traces brushstrokes that simulate lime, red granilla and charcoal, generating graphic canvases.
Navazo also recovers the boiseries or wood paneling in combination with cement. Both materials are mixed in one piece with volume achieving a resounding material effect. He also makes sinuous games and combinations of materials, this time with a dark terrazzo that rests on a piece of ceramic that reproduces a natural stone native to the Burgundy region. Different positions are drawn, reproducing imperfect coatings that the passage of time embellishes.
And, as it cannot be otherwise, Navazo rescues the ceramic language of authentic glazed ceramics full of color, light and intensity. Navazo maintains that color “is full of emotions, it moves us, although we do not know why. His ability to stoke memories is unique”. The decorator proposes monochrome pieces enamelled from the prism of contemporaneity providing a satin effect.
This is the first time that Erico Navazo experiments with ceramics and designs his own collection for indoor and outdoor spaces and does so through APE Grupo.
Erico Navazo is a renowned Spanish interior designer and designer who has created unique projects in private homes, hotels, shops, business headquarters and institutions, restaurants, whose work has been recognized on numerous occasions by design institutions and publications at national and European level. His works are characterized by good taste when mixing different eras and styles.
Recently, the Casa Decor organization awarded him the ‘Special and honorary professional award of 30 years’ for his professional career, and the magazine Interiores also recognized him as the “best National Interior Designer of the Year”. Likewise, Navazo’s work has been awarded by Architectural Digest magazine in 2019 for the best design and as the best professional.
For successive years Navazo appears in the list of the 100 most influential interior designers in Europe according to the prestigious AD magazine. He has also developed product design collaborations with internationally recognized brands such as KA International and Ormo’s Sofas.
‘Esencia Material’ reinforces the strategy of APE Grupo in its commitment to author series, to design in capital letters. The ceramics company has been collaborating for years with professionals in architecture, design and interior design to develop collections with its own stamp. This is the case of the Italian architect Luigi Romanelli, who has developed works such as ‘Work‘, ‘Argillae‘ or ‘AMA‘, or the American designer Sylvie Atanasio with ‘Fado‘. Now, APE Grupo expands its signature collections with Erico Navazo.
Return
