Hand woven brooch by @daniellelfaurie by Leyre Lopez de La Paz

Photo in Kyoto by Kavita

“Flying directly from Mumbai to Kyoto made me feel like I was on the Starship and had suddenly materialised on another planet. Two cultures with deep old connections yet seemed to have moved in completely opposite directions.” - Kavita’s words

Craft in Japan is a lot more visible, treated with a greater degree of reverence, and was a lot more aware that said visibility was what keeps it alive.

Museums, tours, active use of artisans work in everyday places, posters in collaboration with the Anime Haikyuu! to attract the younger crowd, even a whole university dedicated to creating fresh talents for the many artisan crafts of Kansai. It isn’t exactly doing numbers the way that we’d like for it to, but the level of care and how matter of factly it was given was surprising.

It might be a far cry from the guild systems of the past, and how ubiquitous these art forms once were, but it shows a desire to preserve these practices that is far more impassioned and experienced than our own.

Photo of Artist Carmen Casteñeda by William Freeman

The concept of showing artisans at work, or creating spaces that were both showcased and sold the pieces resonated deeply. Breaking, if only just a little, the overbearingly sterile atmosphere that museums maintain to preserve their ancient wears.

If artisan craft is to be a thing of the present and future, then it can’t be placed and treated in the ways we treat archeological digs. A textile tradition that only exists to be looked at has a place, but that place wouldn’t be in your closet, much less one you wear on the day by day. We have to find a way to bring the beauty of craft back into our daily life.

And as it just happens, Kavita has been working on a project here in Madrid related just to that:

Photo Kavita´s Moodboard for RELEVO GENERACIONAL

Some months ago Madrid Design Festival asked her to design an entire exhibit based around Spain’s craft memory for their upcoming fair opening on 5th of February 2026.

We’d call it a weird coincidence if we hadn’t seen so many new people interested in entering this space recently. Craft seems more and more to be the word of the moment, and while we know better than to get hopeful from trends like these, it presents a place of wonderful opportunities.

Focusing on the gamut of practices you can find throughout Spanish history ‘Relevo generacional.’ (Meaning generational handover in english) seeks to show how the artisan crafts of Spain evolved and wove into each other. Creating the cultural artefacts and signs that we take for granted as the backdrop of our everyday lives.

And how, in forgetting them slowly, we blot out the aspects that set apart our own handiwork and culture from the great corporate monocultures that eat away at everything like an invasive species.

A space where the experience is tactile, in your face, and can have you just as easily asking the person behind the work why they made it the way that they did, how they got into it, or whatever else you would want to know.

It’s artistic, you know — being an exhibit and all, but Makila walking sticks to trek the hills and mountains of northern Spain, Mud pottery once used to store and keep perishables, and perfumes made from resins of the forests of yore, were commonplace facts of life in our past.

Can Vivot XTANT Huaca 2025 Photo by Yuki Sugiura

And yet as our world has gotten ‘richer’ the things that make up our everyday lives have slowly but surely become lesser and more alien to us. Walking sticks became sportswear distinguishable only by brand name, containers became disposable plastic, and generally perfumes are now mass produced consumables not rooted in any one place.

Isn’t that the narrative nowadays? Where the people and stories which lie beneath our everyday experiences are increasingly replaced by these universal, depersonalised systems and everything slowly converges into looking sort of the same and feeling sort of worse.

Well, I happened to buy a pair of nice shoes recently, and unlike the feeling of just throwing on an outfit for the day, every time I put them on, even when I see them, I feel a little pep in my step. Like I’m clad in artwork someone made for me. And maybe the practical experience of feeling elegant or clad in finery isn’t something the average person would be willing to shell a couple hundred euro for. But I’m likely not going to need another pair for a decade. And they are nothing to get bored from.

‘Enshittification’ was a kind of crude term recently coined to describe this trend of slowly worsening, homogenising corporate products. And as everyone in the internet is raring to have a go about some unnamed video editing software, Sports shoe company, or streaming subscription service. Maybe they’d be conversely interested in a personal, handcrafted, and long lasting craft made by someone who loves the field so much they dedicated their life to it.

Call craft the ‘Anti-Enshittification’ or ¨Beautification¨ if that’s what’ll get it clicks nowadays. Given how ‘wealthy’ society is nowadays there's no reason these artistic flourishes can’t be part of our everyday today. More plentifully and even more beautifully than they were back then.

Photos from @alberdi_makila

The last few years have been a rollercoaster of emotions: Where anything and everything seems to be in peril on one hand, more and more people are seeking to collect, preserve or even just learn about modern craft on the other. And as work seems increasingly automated and lifeless, more conversations spring up about bringing fashion’s production back to the local level, made in less industrial, more artistic ways.

Maybe the space we inhabit has too narrow of a view, or maybe the remnants of Spanish Christmas cheer have yet to fade from our bodies, bringing us back to cynical, dejected reality, but here at XTANT we leave this half-decade mark rejuvenated with hope placed firmly in our hearts.

And a whole lot of pending emails in our inbox.

Can’t wait to see you all next year!

Forgot to give a few presents? Maybe you’re also Spanish and happen to celebrate reyes? How about checking our VIP Patron pass or individual workshops? God knows we’d certainly appreciate it.