About La Vidriola
Ten years of acrylic, and more to come!
See the story behind La Vidriola and our world of fun acrylic jewellery, starting from 2015 up to our studio in Valencia at the present day!
La Vidriola means piggy bank.
We wanted to pay homage to our starting point with the name you’ve all grown to know and love. In Valencian, our mother tongue from Valencia Spain, Vidriola means piggy bank. We broke our piggy bank in 2015 with €800 of savings inside — and everything you are about to read came from there, and from a great deal of work.
2015
Two designers and a zip pull
Blanca Calabuig and Pablo Nieto started La Vidriola in his parents' house. Blanca is a fashion designer, Pablo is a product designer, and they wanted to make something together where each of them put in what they knew.
They began with bags inspired by beetles. Nobody supplied the zip pull they needed, so they drew it and made it themselves. That piece grew into the first collection: Memoralis.
2016
Wearable art, and people we had never met
We were selling in Spain when orders started arriving from everywhere else — Australia, the UK, Singapore, the United States. They had found something they kept calling wearable art.
We have sold to countries we did not even know existed.
2017
Things that spin, light up,open and more!
The first of many interactive designs, and the ones that became our signature feature. Switch it on, spin it, change the colours, change the flowers, or move your necklace into your favourite position.
La Vidriola is fun, exclusivity and happiness. The interactive mechanisms are how we show this.
2019
The year we stopped being two
Lanzadera — the biggest start-up accelerator in Spain — took us in, chosen from more than three hundred projects. Nothing accelerated quickly. What happened instead was months of learning how to build a team for La Vidriola.
Until then we were two people. After it we were a company with foundations underneath, and people to grow alongside.
A small team, making things far bigger than us.
2020
Hello Kitty, and the worlds that came after
Our first licensed collaboration was with Sanrio. Mixing the Universe of Hello Kitty with our own changed what this company could be.
Since then: Paramount, Hasbro, the Smurfs. Garfield, My Little Pony, Peter Rabbit, Sponge Bob, Power Rangers, Grease — all given a second life as jewellery, always with our own dose of fun.
today
For a few people, on purpose
Every collection is art to wear, and like any art we want it in the hands of a few people who can see the design and the work behind it.
We have sold via preorder almost since day one, and not as a sales tactic: these pieces take a long time to make, and we needed to start early. A collection opens for ten hours, we count what was ordered, and then we make it — by hand, checked one by one.
Watch the magic happen!
Seven steps, every design, every time. This is what "by hand" actually means.
Ideas
The whole team throws ideas around. Most of them do not survive the room.
Pencil
The ones that do get drawn by hand, on paper, until the shape works.
Vectors
Every single pencil line is redrawn to be vectorized, so the machine knows exactly what to cut.
Cut
Colour by colour, one sheet at a time. A design can use 40 colours and 70 pieces.
Painted
By hand, piece by piece. All seventy of them, if that is what it takes.
Glued
Every piece and every layer joined, until flat parts become one object.
Checked
Checked until it is perfect, boxed, and sent anywhere in the world.
Yes, the laser cutter has a name. She is called Bertha Sparkles.
Acrylic
Laser-cut and layered
Up to 40
Colours in one design
Up to 70
Pieces in one design
By hand
In Valencia, every step
10 to 35
Pieces in a typical limited edition run
What we are not willing to change
Always fresh
The ideas keep coming, and we want every one of them to end up as a new design.
Exclusive
Most designs are made in runs of 10 to 35 pieces. Feel like one of a few, because you are.
Local is the best way
Made here in Valencia Spain, with our own hands, one by one, checked by us, and sent from Spain to the rest of the world.
LaVidriolaLover
A global community of people who love this art, and who collect it.
The next layer of our story is being drawn right now.
Nothing we make comes back exactly as it was. Everything we have made is still here to look at — which is why the 'Cabinet of Wonders' archive is not a graveyard.
Lots of love, Blanca, Pablo and the La Vidriola Team
