Isidoro Gordillo belongs to the fifth generation of a family of master lime-makers from Morón de la Frontera. The tradition of lime-making there goes back to 1874, when his forebears set up the region’s first lime kilns. Since 2018, after the retirement of his father and uncle, Antonio and Francisco Gordillo Montaño, Isidoro has run the firm Gordillo’s Cal de Morón SLU.
Since time immemorial, both lime and the lime-maker’s trade have been hallmarks of the municipality of Morón de la Frontera. Going back to Roman times, lime-making has been a major, distinctive activity in the region, as lime is valued both for its properties and for its historical and cultural value. Morón de la Frontera has stood out as Iberia’s chief centre of lime production. The output of its kilns has thus been widely used over the centuries in historic and sacred buildings as well as in civil and residential construction.
Lime is one of the oldest binders used in construction. Obtained by burning limestone rich in calcium carbonate, it is biodegradable and breathable, making it an eco-friendly material requiring no complex manufacturing process and emitting no harmful chemicals to the environment. As it passes through its production cycle, lime undergoes changes in its chemical composition and physical state so that over time it acquires great hardness and strength. Currently the lime produced by Isidoro Gordillo is used not only in construction but also in agriculture, food, mining, water treatment and the chemical industry. It is also one of the binders most sought after by building restoration professionals.
Although lime-making in Morón de la Frontera remains a major activity and there are several local firms devoted to extracting and producing it, only Isidoro Gordillo keeps operating traditionally built kilns (as many as three), allowing lime to be obtained by the craft techniques that have been used since antiquity.
Over the years Isidoro has combined professional practice with teaching activity. Thus he has given courses and workshops at the Spanish Cultural Heritage Institute (IPCE) in Nájera, the Andalusian Historic Heritage Institute (IAPH), the Morón Lime Museum Training Centre, the Seville University School of Architecture, various institutes of architects, such as those of Valencia, Seville, Cáceres, Vigo or La Coruña, or for the Salamanca Provincial Council in the Sierra de Francia, or in Toledo for the town’s Heritage Consortium, among other places.
In 2011 lime production in Morón was included in the UNESCO Register of Good Safeguarding Practices for Intangible Cultural Heritage. This designation has prompted a much wider use of lime across Iberia and contributed to its current popularity.
Vicente Casero is a master carpenter specialised in restoring and building the iconic windmills of the region of La Mancha. Over his extensive career he has managed to recover a trade that had fallen into oblivion for more than a century owing to the lack of continuity between the last generation of master windmill builders and the subsequent generations of windmill carpenters.
Vicente started out as a pupil at the ‘El Pósito’ trade school, at which he was trained as a carpenter. He was further trained at various carpentry workshops until becoming part of the ‘Molinos de Viento’ (Windmills) trade school in Campo de Criptana, at which he worked as a monitor. Here he had the opportunity to contribute to the restoration of the 16th-century ‘Sardinero’ windmill, one of the nine extant Manchegan mills with original machinery. This experience allowed him to explore a trade which at that time – the late nineties – had, as mentioned, simply become extinct.
One of the features characterising the windmills of La Mancha and distinguishing them from others in the Iberian Peninsula and its archipelagos, further to their large size, is the considerable similarity between all of the mills that have survived to our times. Though there may be centuries between when they were built, the measurements of the various elements conserved, along with the uniformity to be seen in their various mechanisms, speak of a building system which from early on attained a degree of accomplishment requiring scarcely any improvements or innovations over the following centuries. By contrast with other models of the time in which major technical advances, such as the so-called lateen sail, were introduced, in the workshops of La Mancha a firmly established method of building common to all windmills was followed almost without variation.
Vicente has had the privilege of working on the nine Manchegan windmills that still have their original machinery. This experience has allowed him to study their structures closely and to figure out the techniques and processes used in their construction. He has been able to apply this knowledge to the building of new windmills with the same characteristics as those original ones, as well as being fully functional.
Thus over his extensive career as a windmill builder and restorer he has been able to participate in the refurbishment of the machinery of the ‘Pechuga’ windmill in El Romeral, the refurbishment of the ‘La Unión’ mill in Camuñas, the restoration of the ‘Ojos Negros’ mill in Teruel and that of the ‘Zacarías’ mill in Los Yébenes, the building of a new windmill with working machinery in the ‘La Jaraba’ estate in Villarrobledo, the reproduction of milling machinery for the Don Quixote Museum in Ciudad Real, and sundry restoration tasks on windmills in Consuegra, Campo de Criptana, Mota del Cuervo, Villamayor de Santiago, Quero, Viñuelas and Moral de Calatrava. Many of the mills on which he has worked have been designated as cultural heritage sites.
Javier Goicoa, from the Irati area of Navarra, is one of the last master shingle roofers left in Spain. Although he learned the trade of roofing with wooden shingles in his youth, it is in recent years that he has been able to ply it regularly, since setting out in 2019 to restore the roof of the Virgen de las Nieves Chapel in the forest of Irati with wooden shingles, as it was built originally. Since then, along with his associate Jesús María Larrañeta, he has been doing important work to prevent the knowledge involved in the trade from disappearing.
He started in the trade at a very early age thanks to his neighbour Fermín Elizondo, to whom he would lend a hand in his spare time. Elizondo, like many other craftsmen in this part of Navarra, would make wooden shingles to order. It was thanks to his teaching that Javier was able to acquire the necessary skill and knowledge to makes shingles of his own.
In order to understand why roofs in this region were tiled with beech-wood shingles we should keep in mind that, traditionally, the particular climate of any one area and the raw materials available in it were what determined the forms and materials used in building. Thus the use of beech wood in roofing makes sense in view of its availability and the local climate. In the mountainous north of the Navarra region, where the snowfalls can be heavy, roofs need to be steeply pitched. Local materials – chiefly wood – were used not just for structures but also for roofing and tiling, and so roofs fitted with beech-wood shingles were formerly common throughout the region.
Despite all of this tiling system’s advantages, some of its drawbacks contributed to a gradual decline. These included the risk of the shingles warping and rotting and, in particular, the fire hazard when the wood was dry. Given these issues, flat clay tiles, whose use soon spread through the area, offered a series of advantages which caused them to progressively displace wooden shingles.
Recently Javier and his partner Jesús María Larrañeta set out to accomplish an important task: passing on their knowledge to a new generation of shingle roofers through courses, exhibitions and demonstrations. Their aim is to see to it that a near-extinct trade may be preserved and continued.
Abel Portilla is a master bell-founder from Gajano in Cantabria. He runs the foundry Hermanos Portilla, a family firm with a long tradition of bell-founding which has specialised in the traditional manufacture and restoration of bells, chimes, carillons and monumental clocks.
Abel started out in the trade at the tender age of thirteen when his grandfather, Marcos Portilla Linares, began to train him and to pass on all the knowledge that he had amassed over a lifetime of bell-founding. Some of his most notable teachings concerned the art of founding bells in situ with an open-hearth furnace, a centuries-old technique which at that time had fallen into disuse.
After starting in the family foundry and once he had set up on his own, the chief founders of the time recommended that he visit the workshops of the leading European founders in order both to learn new bell-making techniques and to refresh his knowledge of the trade. Thus Abel visited various foundries in the Netherlands, Germany and France. Yet he had little taste for what he encountered there, as most of those bell-founders had industrialised almost the whole founding process and their bells had practically identical finishes, highly burnished and varnished, and moreover all of them seemed to sound the same.
Abel therefore decided to continue the trade as he had learned it as a youngster, making each of his bells with traditional techniques and giving preference to commissions for bell-founding by the belfry, allowing him not only to create finely crafted bells with the materials and resources of each region but also to share his trade with all the onlookers who would turn up to watch his work.
Over his life Abel has founded some 5,000 bells, chimes and carillons in Spain and abroad. Recently, as well as working at his foundry in Gajano, where he is training his son, he has embarked on a project to set up a bell-founding school. This involves adapting his grandparents’ former house in Vierna, also in Cantabria, where he has several wood-fired furnaces in which he can cast bells in a wholly traditional way, as has been done since medieval times.
It was published in June 2023 on the occasion of the Richard H. Driehaus Building Arts Awards Ceremony held at the Santa Cruz Museum in Toledo.
This initiative was organized by INTBAU (International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism) and the Rafael Manzano Prize with the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture and Sports and the Spanish High Council of Institutes of Architects
The Awards Ceremony of the Building Artw Awards 2023 was held on 1 June 2023 at the Museum of Santa Cruz in Toledo.
The event was presided over by Ana Muñoz Muñoz, Deputy Minister for Culture and Sports of Castilla–La Mancha; Isaac Sastre de Diego, Director General of Fine Arts at the Ministry of Culture and Sports; Teodoro García Pérez, Councillor for Education, Culture, Historical and Documentary Heritage and Childhood of the City Council of Toledo; Harriet Wennberg, Executive Director of INTBAU in the United Kingdom; and Laureano Matas Trenas, Secretary General of the Spanish Council of Architects’ Associations. Alejandro García Hermida, Director of the initiatives promoted by Richard H. Driehaus in Spain and Portugal, served as master of ceremonies.
On 1 June 2022, the exhibition LIVING HERITAGE: Traditional Building in the 21st Century was inaugurated at the Museum of Santa Cruz. It presents the works awarded in the Richard H. Driehaus Arts of Construction Awards 2023, as well as the master builders of Toledo and the wider region of Castilla–La Mancha.
The work shown was an example of how we can still create buildings, towns and other places as beautiful, lasting and sustainable as those made by former generations.
It was open to the public from 2 June to 24 September 2023.
In the context of this exhibition a series of workshops were organized at the Santa Cruz Museum, the Sephardic Museum and the Toledo Consortium, to promote the knowledge and appreciation of traditional building techniques as well as to bring the general public closer to the work of the masters who still preserve and put them into practice:
Wood color workshop with Paco Luis Martos
(Wednesday, September 6, 2023. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo)
Tile making workshop with Centro Cerámico Talavera
(Thursday, September 7, 2023. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo)
Traditional forging workshop with Miguel Ángel M. Luque
(Friday, September 8, 2023. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo)
Plasterwork workshop with Artesanía Nazarí
(Saturday, September 9, 2023. Museo Sefardí, Toledo)
Workshop on half-timbered walls and trabadillo finishes with Jesús Adeva
(Saturday, September 9, 2023. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo)
II Course on Historic Carpintería de Armar «Consortium of the City of Toledo»
(Monday 11 to Friday 15 September 2023, Municipal Workshop School / UCLM Campus, Toledo)
Toledo trompe l’oeil workshop with Diego Rodríguez
(Friday, September 22, 2023. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo)
Workshop on traditional coatings of Toledo with Luis Prieto
(Saturday, September 23, 2023, Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo)
Ceramic mosaic of Nasrid geometry with Fátima Quesada
(Saturday, September 23, 2023. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo)
Workshop on shingle roofs from the Irati Forest with Javier Goicoa and Jesús María Larrañeta
(Sunday, September 24, 2023. Museo de Santa Cruz, Toledo)
Guided tours of the exhibition were also offered every Thursday at 16:30 and every Friday at 12:00, led by Alba Ramírez Arteaga and Xavier Bueno Llasat.
