Collaboration with the National Museum of Decorative Arts (MNAD)

Madrid at a glance

Madrid is a melting pot of cultures, a place where the old and the new merge in a unique way. From majestic palaces and historical monuments to the vibrant nightlife, Madrid is a city that never sleeps. It is in this context that THE MADRILEÑER began its collaboration with the MNAD.

Presentation of the Hidden Jewel poster to the MNAD museum team

What is the story we imagine about the creation of the Hidden Jewel?

The story takes place in Madrid, in 1912

Lovers of decoration, architecture, crafts, design, and art celebrate the Banquet of Creativity in a beautiful mansion in the capital. But as evening falls, at the climax of the party, an envious sorceress casts a spell upon them, transforming them into marvelous, yet petrified, decorative objects from all eras.

Since then, they have rested in the @MNAD_Madrid , a jewel of Madrid still unknown to some despite being an indisputable Madrid icon.

A Jewel that belongs to everyone

Today we pay tribute to a Madrid icon, a jewel you may not yet know located very close to El Retiro: the @MNAD_Madrid.

With dramatic colors, velvety textures, botanical motifs, and elegant forms, illustrator Irene Pérez reveals just a few of the wonders hidden within this museum, located in one of Madrid's most beautiful neighborhoods. The pleasure is all ours!

Zeus and Medusa: a mythological love

Tick. One. Tick-tick. Two. Tick-tick-tick. Three times Zeus, the most nocturnal guardian cat, blinks. He greets Medusa, his extravagant eight-armed, seven-candelabra-shaped bride, made entirely of steel and ceramic, who gazes down at him from above, in Morse code. And he promises her that they will be together soon… His sorceress owner has told him so.

Hoffman: The vessel that was thought to be a column

With clear ideas and monolithic phrases, Josef was a Viennese and avant-garde professor before becoming a precious translucent vase of three layers of glass and geometric figures.

Just before the spell, he advocated for collaboration between art and industry to create decorative objects. And this is a concept that permeates our daily lives… or doesn't it?

Hoffman the column glass The Madrilener MNAD

Cantilever, the chair that wanted to fly

“Draw a chair without lifting your pencil,” that was the challenge Lilly posed to her tablemates, before they turned it into an iconic Cantilever chair.

Who doesn't remember one like it in some trendy bar or in their parents' or grandparents' living room? This elegant "modern rocking chair" was a commercial success in the 70s, thanks to its fine lines, flexible for the first time, so light they seem like flying chairs.

You can find several on display at the Museum, dressed as if they were about to have tea. Or, now, at the new THE MADRILEÑER; as a decorative throne that reminds us of the beauty of simple things.

Cantilever chair The Madrider MNAD

Birds and flowers

At the banquet, there was a very young girl who was profoundly bored in the company of the famous architect she was accompanying. Rather than fall asleep at the table, struck down by boredom (she was, despite everything, very polite), she decided to let her mind wander to faraway lands. She was strolling through a meadow full of little birds and colorful flowers when, suddenly, the sorceress appeared…

And he froze his thoughts!

These were immortalized in botanical motifs in the ceramics collection at the National Museum of Decorative Arts 😊.