Did you spend time in your parents workshop when you was a child?

Many afternoons after the school, during the weekends and during all my holidays I used to spend my time in the workshop! More hours than I would have liked to.
The workshop is in a very special place. It used to be an industrial ceramics factory which closed to later host sculptors, painters and ceramists including my parents. The atmosphere was rather closer to artisans than to artists.
I don’t know why, but later people started to leave and just a few, like my parents, stayed. Later the antiquarians arrived and the ceramics factory became an old-furniture market.
Nowadays, the ceramics workshop is an island within a desert of woods with knobs. But is it now when I actually enjoy the workshop the most. Much more than when I was a child.

Apparatu was born in Berlin. Why Berlin?

I had a girlfriend who suggested to go to Berlin and I accepted. I didn’t speak any English, nor German and I was still impressed with the fact that Berlin wasn’t in Holland.
Being in Berlin was a great experience. The city has a very hard and cold curtain which impressed me when I arrived, it was scary. But it doesn’t take long to realise that everything in Berlin is relaxed, the city has no clock, the underground isn’t overcrowded and the bars have no closing time.
The bakery down in my house, used to sell milk which they bought in the supermarket right next to it. Isn’t that hilarious?

But a few years later you decide to leave Berlin and go back to Barcelona…

I was 5 years in Berlin, they went really fast. In Berlin I did a bit of everything, from selling hammocks in winter to selling souvenirs in a flea market on Sundays.
After so many years being at my parents workshop, I decided to create my own. I was often thinking on big pieces but in my scarce workshop I had just an oven where only a sloping cup would fit. I started to travel in-between Barcelona and Berlin. Living in the two cities was great but less effective, so I decided to return to Barcelona where I have been for about a year. I have noticed the change considerably. Now I have time to work on the pieces and in Sant Cugat, the village where I live, there are fewer bars where to stop by.

Do you exclusively use ceramics in your work, or do you use other materials frequently?

Coming back to the workshop in Barcelona and suddenly having so much space, tools and materials; pushed me to experiment with more. I have started to mess around with plastics and cement, and my parents start to regret that I am back.

Do you enjoy the most doing functional objects such as lamps or vases rather than others which are merely decorative?

I have studied industrial design and in these times I was in love with it. After finishing my studies I broke up with it and when I went to Berlin I disconnected completely. Later I rediscovered ceramics and decoration. Nowadays, I am slowly approaching to design; is not the same doing what you think that thinking on what you have to do. With decoration anything is allowed and you set the rules. It is a funny experience.