The pleasure of making beautiful things with your hands

One afternoon in the middle of lockdown, sometime in April, it occurred to Tania Baides, the founder of the communications and public relations studio that bears her name, that in spring of this year she would finally have time to do the things she had always wanted to do. And one of those things was learn how to make things with her own hands. Beautiful, artisanal things, of the kind that feed the soul.

“The first thing I did was call the ceramicist Jaume Roig”, says Tania. “I asked him if he would like to form part of a workshop alongside other artisans - Siurells Bet, Antic Mallorca and Tinons Floral Designer. He said he would be delighted, because it was a project based on a network of trust, with craftspeople who know, respect and admire one another”. The very first Amb les mans workshop came into being with these four participants, and was followed by a second one comprised of the pâtissier Lluís Pérez, Deborah Pinya from Fornet de Sa Llotgeta, Huguet Mallorca, which makes cement tiles, and Jaume Roig, who repeated the experience because he had generated a very long waiting list.

“The artisans show people how they work and live. The workshops allow us to enter their life, their home. The courses last six hours, three in the morning and three in the afternoon, and in them you are also spending time with people who have your same interests and concerns”, Tania explains.

The aim of this project is not to make money, “but to reinvest it so that the craftspeople have their own e-shop and can broaden their promotion channels. I want to help them grow as much as possible in this sense, in order to contribute to maintaining their craft and tradition. We live in a time when we need to carry on pounding away, working and thinking about material things a little less. This is a time for ethics, transparency and social responsibility”.

Antic Mallorca was one of the participants in the first Amb les mans workshop. Ses madones de sa llata, a group of women artisans who work with palmetto, as they learned to from their mothers and grandmothers, create contemporary bags using this ancient craft. “Thanks to the workshop”, says Araceli Iranzo, the founder of Antic Mallorca, “we have been able to transmit sa llata so that people learn about it and value it, and hopefully it will not be lost. Making things with our hands helps us know ourselves and makes us better people. The fast pace of the world we live in, the overload of information and external stimuli draw us away from who we really are. With spaces like Amb les mans, we find our equilibrium and people who are looking for moments of authenticity and connection”.

“Being an artisan isn’t easy”, says Tinons, of Tinons Floral Designer, “and that’s why people who sign up for these workshops are [...]

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