Icons of spanish design

If we say "icons of Spanish design," many will instantly picture a Chupa Chups lollipop and a mop. Well, this week we aim to prove that a stick isn’t always the answer to everything. Stay with us to uncover our top six treasures of national industrial design. Surely, you’ll recognize more than one and more than two!

As we did with the finest of Italian design, we’ve curated a spectrum from luxury objects to everyday essentials.  All, however, etched milestones in design history. Some achieved immediate success; others achieved recognition half a century later. You spot some on the big and small screen, others on your kitchen shelf, dining table, or hanging from the ceiling. Their shared hallmark: a design so impeccable it becomes an identity unto itself.

BKF Chair

BKF stands for Bonet, Kurchan and Ferrari, the surnames of its three architect creators. Though largely Argentine in authorship, we can’t overlook Antoni Bonet’s pivotal role: GATCPAC member and Le Corbusier disciple. After the military coup against the Second Republic, Bonet exiled to Argentina and co-founded the Austral Group with Kurchan, Ferrari, and other South American titans. and other great Argentine architects. Together they reshaped the continent’s architectural foundations, their influence rippling back across the Atlantic. Bonet himself realized Spanish gems like La Ricarda and his Ponzano Street building in Madrid.

Basket Lamp

Miquel Milá drew from Chinese lanterns to birth an unmistakable icon. It was 1962 when he envisioned a plastic globe cradled in a rattan cage with a top handle. The globe already existed, so Milá pondered the optimal way to carry it from place to place. The rest is pure Spanish design legend. An atemporal classic, a collector’s craving since the 1970s, endlessly reissued and reimagined in fresh materials and scales.

Marquina Oil Dispenser

Catalan architect Rafael Marquina crafted the perfect cruet in 1961. Perhaps a designer’s toughest challenge lies in refining objects that have existed since time immemorial. In his diabolo-shaped oil and vinegar cruet, With his diabolo-shaped oil-and-vinegar set, Marquina solved a centuries-old scourge: the perpetually sticky vessel that houses olive oil. His fix is as simple as it is ingenious: the spout runs shorter than the upper funnel’s diameter, so the drop always falls inside. Simple, easy to use and easy to fill. And, in addition, the beauty of its design is indisputable

Fase lamp

We couldn’t pick just one. Collectors obsess over them, yet for years they languished overlooked. Industrias Fase, trade name of "Fabricaciones Seriadas", was the venture Luis Pérez Oliva and Pedro Martín launched in Torrejón de Ardoz. From there, they shipped their creations across half the globe, earning worldwide renown.  In fixtures like the mythic Boomerang 2000, Rifle, or Presidente, their construction quality and aesthetic brilliance redefined the desk lamp forever. Recognition bloomed in the XXI century, starring in design magazines, anchoring history books, and, yes, forever illuminating Don Draper's desk.

Disa lamp

Another lamp follows: the Disa, by one of our preferred architects, the brilliant Coderch. Photographed iconically by Català-Roca for promotion, it channels a fireplace’s glow and intensity. Born in wood in 1954, it radiates absolute modernity today. As a curiosity, Picasso, gifted a Disa, replied to Coderch with a postcard immortalizing it in a few red strokes.

Pegaso Sports Cars

Though Pegaso now evokes trucks, in the 1950s they produced the most luxurious sports cars of their time, authentic rolling jewels for aristocracy and stars of the golden age of cinema. The dream of its designer, Wilfredo Ricart, barely lasted six years, yet birthed some of history’s most ravishing automobiles. Today, they command astronomical sums at international auctions as prized collectibles.