Maite G. Tejedor
Tools, jump rings, enamels, resins, drawers, ideas that are born and that sometimes survive, grow and evolve, and sometimes fly off and vanish, or turn into the seeds of many others… spotlights, coffee, soft music. And at the centre of all this, Maite.
Maite is not just another piece of the Ginger & Velvet world. Not just any piece. She mixes ideas, colours, shapes, dreams, fears… and out of her cocktail shaker comes a universe full of meaning that fills the senses. If you look closely, you will see animals that fly without wings coming out of her head, plants that grow without water and a calming silence full of extraordinary sounds.
How a collection is born
Every collection is a play in her creative mind, where inanimate characters speak, think, feel and convey. First the theme, then the story and, finally, the pieces that tell it, as though they were the acts. Then we bring them to life in the workshop.
Behind every collection there is an inspiration and a great deal of work, but above all there is a present awareness: they are born and grow out of the moment they inhabit. That is why no collection is like the one before.
The world of Ginger and Velvet is the kitchen of my own life's process, which is why it cooks honestly and on a low heat. It is also an open kitchen that anyone can walk into.
Maite G. Tejedor
Where she comes from
Gifted with an extraordinary sensitivity for the arts — a graduate in Spanish Philology, with piano studies and a master's in acting at the prestigious Juan Carlos Corazza school — she opens the doors of her rich inner world to us, now through the design of stories… which are not only jewellery.
That training explains rather more than it seems. One of her collections is structured like a text and performed like a role: it has tone, it has rhythm and it has something to say. And the pieces that come out of it are not merely decorative: they serve an aesthetic purpose, and also one of self-esteem and confidence, and very often they have been and still are carriers of secrets.
The kitchen is open: you can drop by the workshop at Calle Alameda 4, in the Barrio de las Letras in Madrid, see how the pieces are worked and, if you feel like it, make your own on one of the enamelling courses. And if you would rather read about it at your own pace, Maite tells it in the Workshop Notebook.
