If you'd told me a year or so ago that anybody in the design world would be paying serious attention to the grand old Spanish company of Lladró, I¹d have thought you were either out of touch with the times (if I were being

kind) or had very peculiar tastes indeed (if I were being judgmental). In fact, of course, you¹d have been way ahead of the pack.

Lladró, which specialises in the sort of beautifully made porcelain figurines and objets that never usually grace the houses of the design-aware set, is one of those grand, totemic companies that fall into the category of national treasure. Although not as old as I'd thought, being merely middle-aged — it was founded in 1951 by three brothers, Juan, José and Vicente — it has always seemed infinitely older. A Spain without Lladró is simply unthinkable ­ its figurines grace almost every solid, bourgeois home, not to mention, I¹m reliably informed, those of the Spanish royal family and the Pope.

But, while its traditional figurines — so beloved of tourists and those charged with buying presents for visiting heads of state — frankly aren't my thing, the design world duly sat up and took notice when the quirkily brilliant young Spanish designer Jaime Hayon was made creative director of the company. He is not known for following convention — his style has been described as "kinky baroque".

Hayon first came to attention with his AQHayon bathroom collection, produced for a then little-known Spanish company called ArtQuitect. His designs put it on the world map. The notion behind the collection was to introduce a sense of voluptuousness, sensuality and joy into the bathroom, which he did by adding accessories that allowed for flowers, fruit and even champagne, as well as a degree of personal customisation of this generally rather coldly efficient room.

But behind the high jinks and the fun lay a serious purpose. Hayon is in love with fine craftsmanship. He loves history and tradition and, in his work, seeks to find ways of combining a sense of continuity with fine craftsmanship to produce something unique and contemporary. One of the things that made him take up the challenge, he told me, was that he was so taken with the workforce, its great skill and its commitment to making the finest porcelain. And he loved the Lladró brand, which he saw as one of Spain¹s great treasures, but also recognised needed to be made more contemporary, more relevant.

Meanwhile, the company had already started to modernise itself. Some of the traditional artisanal skills had been turned to making beautiful porcelain taps for basins, bidets, showers and baths as well as towel rods, soap dispensers, trays and dishes. Then Bodo Sperlein, a fine German ceramicist, was recruited to do a series of designs, called Re-Cyclos Magical. Anybody who knows Sperlein's work will have no trouble guessing the direction he took ­ he deconstructed the more delicate parts of the traditional designs (flowers, birds, fairies and butterflies) and used the fragments to create new, functional pieces, such as candleholders, chandeliers, vases, centrepieces and wall lamps, even jewellery. Winged insects, birds, flowers — all favourites in the Lladró archive — were taken apart and refashioned.

Hayon became creative director last summer and the first pieces to emerge under his leadership — what Lladró calls its Re-Deco collection — were shown at the Maison et Objet interiors show in Paris at the end of January. Hayon had reinterpreted the traditional figurines and given them a platinum finish to emphasise the painstaking attention to detail, encouraging those who love them to look at them with fresh eyes and find new ways of incorporating them into the contemporary interior. With Hayon at the helm, a Lladró piece may yet become the cutting-edge statement for the loft-living, Wallpaper reading set.

www.lladro.com

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