Inside Northern Spain: Discovering Its Hidden Crafts & Local Treasures

About This Episode

On this episode of Brand on the Run, Casey Brand takes us along as she explores the beauty, culture, and craftsmanship of northern Spain. For more than 15 years she has carried an oddly specific dream of wearing overalls and making furniture, and while packing for a recent move she found a note she had written years ago, imagining herself in Europe learning to build furniture. So she and her friend Nikki headed to a tiny village in the mountains of Cantabria to spend a week doing exactly that.

Her journey begins at Helguera Palacio, a 17th-century palace turned boutique hotel with just 11 rooms, restored by interior designer Malales Martínez Canut. The original facade still stands, the orange trees in front are centuries old, and nearly everything inside, from the rugs to the paintings, can be bought. Over lunch, Casey talks with Lauren Stern, who founded Concentric Travel after meeting a master plaster carver in Morocco and wishing she could spend a day learning his craft.

Then it’s into the workshop of Israel Martín, a furniture maker who works entirely with hand tools. Casey and Nikki plane a live-edge slab for Casey’s table, learn to sharpen blades on Japanese water stones, and hear why Israel only cuts trees that have fallen in the wind. He shows them a saw from 1928 that he still uses, and designs a chair that can be taken apart for the trip home. Along the way the wood shavings become earrings, the sheep bells signal the end of each workday, and an afternoon in Santillana del Mar offers a stroll through a quiet village.

What stays with Casey is the slowness: the hours of sanding and sharpening that a machine could do faster, and the connection that comes from doing it by hand. As she puts it, the beauty isn’t only in the finished piece, and if there’s a dream rattling around in your head, it may be closer than you think.

“The beauty isn't just in the finished piece. It's in all the steps that get you to the finished piece.”

Casey Brand

What You’ll See

• A tour of Helguera Palacio, a 17th-century palace turned 11-room boutique hotel where the antiques are for sale
• How Lauren Stern's idea for Concentric Travel began with a plaster carver in Morocco
• A week in Israel Martín's all-hand-tool workshop: planing, chiseling, and no shortcuts
• Sharpening blades on Japanese water stones, and a saw from 1928 still in use
• Wood-curl earrings, an afternoon in Santillana del Mar, and sheep bells at the end of each day
• A chair designed to come apart, so it can make the trip home