Plants are food and medicine. Moreover, plants are present in countless objects that we come into contact with every day. Vegetable fibres play a vital role in our cultural evolution and are an important element in our economic progress.
A small number of plant species give us fibres that we can use to make many different objects with an even larger variety of forms. Countless craftsmen and women have used their skill and intelligence to find the most appropriate designs to solve our shared problems. The beauty contained in these traditional forms and designs have inspired great artists, whose works are admired all over the world, and some of these solutions are applied even today, in the most modern techniques and materials. What do the plants that provide us with the most useful fibres have in common? Where are they found? What do they look like? Where do the most frequently used fibres come from?
This exhibition invites the visitor to discover how fibres are used (excluding textiles) in the Mediterranean basin. These applications are ordered according to the plants that provide the fibres and to the specific uses we make of them. Braids are used to make rope and join objects separated in space, fibres are interwoven to make covers for different surfaces, or are woven together with harder stems to make baskets, bleached palms are used as adornments for important feasts and celebrations…
The exhibition also seeks to pay homage to the work and skills of craftsmen and women, their imagination in inventing tools to master these fibres and the trades that have developed infinite solutions from simple organic plant material.