visit mircea anghel's latest experimental + gravity-defying pieces at his studio in portugal

mircea anghel honors portugal’s boat building community

This summer, artist, and designer Mircea Anghel will open his studio in Portugal and surrounding grounds to the public for the first time. Located in a striking 1,500 sqm sawmill on the rural estate of Herdade da Barrosinha, in the historic municipality of Alcácer do Sal, this new vibrant hub for art, design, and craftsmanship will reveal Anghel’s ground-breaking output, entirely inspired by the skills and knowledge of the boat building community in Portugal – the distinctive mark of his practice. His latest and boldest creations will be staged there in a large-scale inaugural exhibition from July 1 to August 31, 2023.

workshop space in Portugal | image © Francisco Nogueira, all courtesy Mircea Anghel

Situated an hour’s journey south of Lisbon, Companhia Agrícola da Barrosinha was founded in 1947 and comprises two old rice husking and packaging factories, a former primary school, a canteen, the sawmill, and the mills built on the right bank of the Sado river. The studio enjoys scenic views of the Alentejo landscape, including hills, vineyards, rice fields, and mills scattered among the cork trees. The broader area also includes the village of Barrosinha, its hotel and guesthouses, a winery, a tavern, and the chapels Nossa Senhora da Conceição and Senhor das Chagas. Full of authenticity and history, the land was the cradle of the 1974 Carnation Revolution, from which a strong sense of community emerged, still felt today.

artist and designer Mircea Anghel | image © Francisco Nogueira

When Mircea Anghel (see more here) relocated his studio from the Portuguese capital to the estate in 2019, it considerably impacted his practice. In addition to increasing the scale of his already voluminous designs, Anghel found new sources of inspiration in the skills and knowledge of the local boat-building community. Seeking to nurture local practices, support the community, and coexist with the agricultural environment, where industry and innovation had taken root for decades, the designer decided to keep the sawmill active. To this day, shipwrights and workers from around the country come to the estate to buy and carve wood.

‘Pico White’ table (2020) | image © Zé Maria Leitão de Sousa

experimenting with age-old techniques and raw materials

Intrinsically connected to nature, Anghel’s iconic gravity-defying pieces are entirely handmade, using raw and responsibly sourced materials, such as wood, stone, salt, water, wine, and fire. Wood takes center stage in his work, either salvaged from demolition sites, from forests after harsh storms, or responsibly harvested. Some pieces are thousands of years old, while others have been newly felled. His work ultimately combines age-old woodworking techniques with experimental methods, resulting in one-of-a-kind creations.

Moreover, process, balance, and equilibrium are at the core of his philosophy and serve as a signature of his innate scientific approach. His lifelong interest in mathematics is reflected in the stochastic nature of his work, which injects an element of unpredictability into his designs.

Influenced by one of the guiding principles of Japanese craftsmanship, Mircea Anghel is determined not to skew the solution to fit a preconceived outcome, instead surrendering to the natural flow of the creative process. Just as he constantly strives to evolve his practices, his pieces are not static, seemingly midway in a biological process of growth, corrosion, deterioration, decomposition, or explosion, immortalizing a split moment of effervescent organic transformation. ‘I tend to reflect upon a particular piece of wood for months or even years, contemplating its form and trying to uncover its hidden beauty and aesthetic. Through my craftsmanship, I reveal the object trapped within,’ he comments.

‘Lose Control’ table (2021) | image © Richard John Seymour

the ground-breaking pieces on show

This summer, the inaugural exhibition will feature several of Anghel’s iconic pieces, produced in his signature asymmetric forms and reflecting his constant experimentation with contrasting materials and his daring engineering. Among the seminal works are the monumental ‘Pestele’ and ‘Pico’ tables composed of two contrasting elements slotting into one another harmoniously to form a perfectly crafted union. Built as an ode to Pico, the volcanic island in the Azores, ‘Pico Rosa’, defined by a sculptural base in rose-veined natural marble stone from the Portuguese village of Estremoz and a beautifully weathered hand-shaped Bubinga wood surface, exemplifies the mathematical ratio between two dualistic elements characterizing his style.

image © Francisco Nogueira

The designer will also introduce works in copper and new tables in wood and stone, including ‘Asymmetric Democracy’, all made from the same mathematical formula that allows these elements, at first sight unstable, to be perfectly balanced and in harmony. Taking center stage in the exhibition is his iconic ‘Democracy’ table comprising a white marble ball base, topped with a rounded surface crafted in burned Albizia ferruginea wood. Drawing on the idea of a table as a place of union and conversation, ‘Democracy’ explores this specific characteristic rather than the whole spectrum of properties of a traditional table. The piece tilts according to the interaction of its users and explores the dynamics between people by bringing movement to an otherwise static object.

‘Lago Di Como’ (2022) | image © Manuel Moniz

Moreover, stretching across the entirety of one of the workshop’s walls is a monumental installation composed of stately wood offcuts from Anghel’s pieces that give the appearance of an ever-growing sculpture with intertwined geometrical shapes. This constantly evolving art piece exemplifies the designer’s love for wood, a raw material with multiple facets.

To complement this exhibition, a show of new works by Mircea Anghel will launch at the Francisco Fino Gallery in Lisbon, making it a pivotal moment in the designer’s career. The designer is also working on two major initiatives, both following his guiding principle of giving back to the local community; one aiming to revive the long Portuguese tradition of boat building in collaboration with local shipwrights and the other seeking to found a community of artists, designers, makers, and scientists around his workshop to encourage collaborative residencies for young creators.