A modern European artisan, De La Espada centres craftsmanship in our furniture. Our dedicated workshop in Portugal specialises in solid wood and upholstery, and we also collaborate with artisans and small workshops across disciplines.

Learn more about our craft and collaborators below, as well as our initiatives to celebrate and promote craft.

Twenty-Five Dining Table by De La Espada Atelier has a tabletop featuring handmade Portuguese tiles from the historic and innovative tile workshop Viúva Lamego in Sintra. These tiles, or azulejos, are embedded in the visual landscape of Portugal, adorning both the interior and exterior of buildings, offering both practical benefits – easy to clean, insulating, heat and water resistant – and aesthetic: luxurious to touch with deep colours and a reflective gloss surface with endless possibilities for artistic expression. The tiles we use are made from clay formed by extrusion, and glazed using metallic oxides as a colour vehicle. A high gloss glaze creates a beautiful reflective surface. As an artisanal product, each tile is unique, bringing further interest and individuality to the product.

Sela Chairs by Luca Nichetto have a combined seat/backrest in saddle leather suspended from a solid wood frame. The leather is moulded by De La Espada craftspeople under the direction of Portuguese saddlers at the Sela Lusitana workshop with generations of craft wisdom, then finished by these saddlers at their workshop in Leiria, Portugal. The saddle leather is natural grain cowhide, vegetable tanned, and expertly formed employing a generations-old process for crafting equestrian saddles.

Twenty-Five Bedside by De La Espada Atelier features side panels hand woven from junco at the Toino Abel workshop in Castanheira, Portugal. Toino Abel specialises in the age-old craft of basket weaving using junco (soft rush) reeds. The Toino Abel team harvests, dries and processes the raw material before weaving it on hand looms, primarily crafting handbags.

Our Twenty-Five Bed features a junco headboard handwoven by De La Espada craftspeople employing similar traditional methods.

Special editions of Twenty-Five Dining Chair by De La Espada Atelier and Capo Lounge Armchair by Neri&Hu are available upholstered in mantas alentejanas, traditional blankets from the Alentejo region of Portugal. The story of the blankets begins over one hundred years ago, when the blankets would be used to keep shepherds warm during the harsh Alentejo winters. The blankets have continued to be used over the years for cloaks, rugs, bedding, furniture and accessories. The mantas De La Espada uses are made at the Fabricaal workshop in Reguengos de Monsaraz, where artisans use the same traditional weaving techniques and manual wooden looms used in the blankets’ earliest creation.

The Arts & Crafts Cabinet by De La Espada Atelier features details and handles handcrafted by ceramic artist Teresa Branco at her studio in Porto. The pieces reflect Branco’s experimental approach, combining glazes and oxides as well as two glazing techniques: pouring and painting with a brush. The inherent variability brought by the process makes every piece unique.

The sliding panels on the Arts & Crafts Cabinet by De La Espada Atelier are available in a range of options. One option is Flores Linen, a special linen textile from Lisbon-based Flores Textile Studio. This textile is made using an entirely artisanal process, from the harvesting and processing of the flax to weaving on manual looms to hand-dyeing, giving each piece individuality and character. The linen has an inviting tactility and great depth of colour.

Another option for the sliding panels of the Arts & Crafts Cabinet by De La Espada Atelier is single-edition textile art. Our first artist collaboration is with London-based textile artist Catarina Riccabona. Catarina uses a dobby loom to hand weave her textiles, working intuitively to create unique patterns, textures, and colour combinations as she weaves. With a view to sustainability, she uses eco-friendly yarns like linen, hemp, undyed or plant-dyed wools and undyed alpaca from the UK, as well as second-hand or recycled yarns, and “waste warps” from fellow weavers. Her work makes a feature of the characteristics of each yarn, bringing greater texture and visual variation to each piece while calling attention to her process.

Two Arts & Crafts Cabinets feature single-edition textile art by Catarina Riccabona, designed by the artist specifically for the cabinet each adorns.

The solar-powered De La Espada workshop in Portugal specialises in solid wood and upholstery. Our craftspeople combine high tech machinery and handcraft to achieve the highest level of European craft with meticulous detailing. Built to last a lifetime, our furniture employs noble materials that improve with the mark of age, and time-tested construction methods, including mortise and tenon, wedge tenon, and dovetail joinery. De La Espada craftspeople, designers, and product engineers work closely together on the same floor, combining expertise and solving design challenges in real time, allowing for thoughtful innovation.  

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FILM
Watch the De La Espada workshop in action here

MEET OUR CRAFTSPEOPLE
Read more about our craft, and meet our craftspeople here

ABOUT WOOD
Discover more about the unique qualities and performance of wood here

PRODUCT INFORMATION
See all De La Espada products at a glance here

De La Espada is proud to support the work of Portuguese non-profit organisation Passa Ao Futuro. With a shared goal of strengthening the future of crafts in our home country, we exchange research and knowledge while offering them financial and practical support.

Recent initiatives include five design residencies organised by Passa Ao Futuro in the context of the Made In Platform for Contemporary Crafts & Design project which paired contemporary designers with artisans specialising in basket weaving, with the aim of innovating and strengthening the future of the craft; and an exhibition of the final product collections from these residencies shown at Galeria De La Espada in Porto.

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STORIES
Read more about the recent exhibition here
Read more about Passa Ao Futuro here