At XTANT 2025, in Palma de Mallorca, I reunited with my longtime pal Maite Felices. Over ten years in the past, she organized a phenomenal weblog tour by Spain for one in all her shoppers, which I used to be lucky to hitch, and we’ve stayed in contact ever since. This time, she and Martin Palacios Ylätalo joined forces as editors of the undertaking underneath the identify Palacios Felices. Martin Palacios Ylätalo, offered some creative works—escalade-sized on linen material—to honor the worth of information. With this primary undertaking referred to as ‘Diderot d’Alembert Sant Antoni’ they spotlight the guide engraving particulars and the visible fantastic thing about designs initially created to show or transmit concepts of the way to make.
The works offered at XTANT are primarily based on the restoration of illustrations from crucial work of the French Enlightenment: the colossal compilation of information L’Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers [Encyclopedia, or Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts] by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond D’Alembert. The items regarding textile data come from the amount totally devoted to this craft, denoting the significance of textiles in society.
Challenge primary “Diderot d’Alembert Sant Antoni”
initiatives for the dissemination of historic data materials in creative media
These photographs, till now inaccessible for high-quality copy, have been recovered by a laborious course of by Martin Palacios Ylätalo. Their authentic objective was to vary the collective mind-set, and so they had been important in democratizing technical data and breaking the custom of closed guilds.
The unique copper plates, handcrafted to depict for the primary time the work of artisans of the period, carried not solely political and ideological worth in dignifying bodily labor and sensible data — they had been created with immense consciousness. They manually engraved visible feats to go away behind clear operational directions and understanding.
The Encyclopédie documented trades, instruments, and manufacturing processes and included entries on many textile crafts comparable to weavers (tisserands), dyers (teinturiers), carders (cardeurs), spinners (fileurs), and silk producers (soyeux). It additionally described associated trades like lace makers, embroiderers, and others. Many of those entries featured extremely detailed depictions of spinning machines and looms, dyeing processes, and tailoring and ending instruments. Right this moment, just a few uncommon editions, volumes, or free pages stay as testimony to this nice masterpiece, L’Encyclopédie. // txt Palacios Felices //
Photographs @vosgesparis // 2nd picture Georg Kayser Studio
