We arrived in La Bisbal d'Empordà during a summer trip between Provence and the Catalan coast. It was a planned stop, but we didn't have a precise list of addresses or an itinerary to follow: we were mainly looking for shops, ceramics, and objects that could tell the story of the region.
We remember the warm light on the facades, the ocher-toned houses, and the sound of shoes on the cobblestones. We were tired after many hours of travel, but it only took entering the first shops to realize that we would need to observe everything calmly.
A stop chosen for its ceramics
We hadn't come to La Bisbal just to quickly visit the center and leave. We wanted to understand what lay behind the shop windows and see up close the relationship between the town and ceramic craftsmanship.
Along the streets, there was a succession of tidier shops, small workshops, crowded displays, and spaces where objects seemed to have accumulated over the years. Not everything was immediately understandable, and that's precisely what made the search interesting.
You had to go in, shift your gaze from one shelf to another, and also observe what was at the back of the room. Some of the most distinctive shapes were not displayed prominently.
Behind the shop windows of La Bisbal
We walked along the main street several times, entering ceramic shops, workshops, and spaces dedicated to antique furniture and objects. Some windows were minimalist, while others were completely filled with different shapes, colors, and materials.
The most interesting part was the contrast between very simple objects, related to everyday use, and more sculptural pieces. Vases, jugs, geometric elements, and enameled surfaces coexisted without a rigid division between art, decoration, and function.
We weren't looking for souvenirs or objects recognizable only by their origin. We wanted to find shapes that could retain their character even when removed from the place where we found them.
The shop window seen from the car
At the end of the day, we were already back in the car. We had resumed our journey and thought the visit was over. Then, passing by a shop window, we glimpsed a combination of geometric shapes and intense glazes.
We slowed down, looked for a place to stop, and walked back. It wasn't a large exhibition space, and the discovery was nothing spectacular. It was simply the feeling of finally having found something that matched our search.
It wasn't a planned discovery. It arose from a detail seen for a few seconds, when we thought we had already left.
Inside, we found proportions, colors, and modules that seemed immediately current. Not because they followed a trend, but because they could naturally fit into contemporary environments.
Geometries
Simple and repeatable modules, capable of creating different compositions through solids, voids, and overlaps.
Glazes
Colors not perfectly uniform and surfaces that changed depending on the light and observation point.
Size
Small objects, easy to integrate into interiors, yet sufficiently characterized not to go unnoticed.
From the trip to the Vicode selection
The selection wasn't made by indiscriminately buying everything we liked. We observed the proportions, touched the surfaces, and imagined each object outside the shop, inside a home.
Some pieces only worked in the context where they were displayed. Others, however, maintained an autonomous presence: they could be placed on a shelf, inside a bookcase, or next to objects from different cultures and periods.
From that selection, the core of the Echoes of Geometry collection was born. The name recalls precisely what we recognized during the trip: shapes already belonging to the local ceramic tradition, but still capable of suggesting new compositions.
What we remember about La Bisbal d’Empordà
Today, those objects have arrived on Vicode, but for us, they remain linked to a very specific moment: a day of searching, the fatigue of travel, and a shop window noticed almost by chance before leaving the town.
It's one of the aspects we love most about our work. A collection isn't always born from a pre-defined project. Sometimes it starts with a detour, an encounter, or the decision to go back.
La Bisbal d’Empordà has remained in our archive not only as a place linked to ceramics but as an example of a search done without haste, leaving room for what we hadn't anticipated.
