La Orotava Carpenter Preserves Vanishing Trade with New Book
A former carpenter in La Orotava, seeking to preserve the fading legacy of traditional woodworking, has published a book documenting the history of the craft and his family's workshop, now a museum.
In La Orotava, being a master carpenter used to be a respected and common job. But now, it's becoming rare. This is mainly because new machines have made furniture cheaper to produce. However, this also means that everything looks the same, and we're losing unique, original designs. The wood isn't the same either – it doesn't have the same color or smell, and there aren't any wood shavings on the floor anymore.
Tools like gouges and compasses, which were in every workshop, have been replaced by computers that often make the work easier.
Adolfo Padrón Pacheco comes from a family of carpenters. He didn't want this trade, which his father taught him and which supported many families in town, to disappear. That's why he decided to write a book about it.
His family's carpentry workshop, located at 49 Doctor Domingo González Street, celebrated 70 years last year. It's still there, but it stopped making things in 2003. Now, it's a museum on the Route of the Mills, where people can learn about this traditional trade that's part of the town's history.
In the 1950s and 60s, La Orotava had more carpentry workshops than many other towns in Tenerife. Only a few are still around today. They all did pretty much the same work, just in different spaces. Adolfo's family's workshop was 113 square meters and employed eight people, including workers and apprentices, plus his father. It was in a good location and well-run, with both machine-operated and manual sections. Each carpenter specialized in a specific task, like carpentry or cabinetmaking, with cabinetmakers focusing more on furniture.
In the 60s, his workshop made up to two bedroom sets a month, along with planters, cedar chests for clothes, cupboards, suitcases, and washing stones. Adolfo remembers customers changing their wedding dates to make sure they had their bedroom set ready in time.
Each carpenter was independent and didn't want to show others what they were working on, even though they all started young and knew each other well. They shared machine parts, but each had their own unique templates. Carpenters also had to be good at measuring, because the furniture styles customers wanted often didn't fit the space or were too expensive. Adolfo's father would measure, adjust the templates, and simplify the designs to make them more affordable.
He remembers a family from La Orotava leaving his workshop carrying all the pieces themselves. He wishes he had a camera to capture that moment.
Adolfo values not only the work but also the good times. Everyone in the industry was friends, and they would go out together on weekends to have drinks and laugh. On Saint Joseph's Day, the patron saint of carpenters, they would celebrate with a lunch outside or at his house. His mother would cook rabbit in salmorejo sauce, sweet potatoes, and soup, using ingredients given by people who his father had helped for free.
In the 70s, with the rise of tourism in Puerto de la Cruz, furniture making declined, and the trade started to disappear.
Adolfo found relief in teaching when his workshop faced difficulties. He taught vocational training in Wood and Furniture at IES Manuel González Pérez. He was the perfect person to pass on the knowledge of a trade that's determined to survive. The fact that there's a vocational training module shows that it still interests people and offers job opportunities.
Besides publishing his book, Adolfo is happy to have preserved something that would have been lost otherwise. Just like the words he chose for his title, maravalla and garlopa, which are unfamiliar to most people but not to those who worked with wood.
Adolfo Padrón Pacheco started working on the book in 2017, although he had been collecting information for years. As time passed, memories of his workshop came back to him. He gathered the information he had saved and the stories from neighbors, workers, family, and customers, and started to put them together. This involved finding names and dates for the photos. His mother had written everything on the back of the photos, which she kept in envelopes. He sorted and selected over 380 photos, both in color and black and white, each with its own story inside the book, and arranged them with the editor's advice.