Tag: #merchandiseproducts

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Merchandising products: soap gift set “Colóquio dos simples”

We introduce a new merchandising product developed for the project “European Digital Treasures”.  It’s a set of soaps whose fragrances and properties are inspired by the plants, colours and textures of the west coast of India.

Soap gift set “Colóquio dos simples”

Every soap bar was produced using plants identified and described by Garcia de Orta in one of his 59 colloquies that constitute his work “Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs, and Medicinal Things of India, and on some fruits found there, where some things of practical medicine and other things good to know are addressed”, published in Goa, in April 10th, 1563. For each plant, the author, a Portuguese physician and botanist or naturalist, born in 1501, registered: the names in Portuguese, Greek, Latin, Sanscrit, Arabic and in several local dialects; the origin – the places where they spontaneously grew or were cultivated; the markets where they could be found; their characteristics, therapeutic uses and the way of administration.

All this knowledge was gathered and organized by Garcia de Orta over a period of more than thirty years spent in India. He left for India in March 12th, 1534 as the physician of the Captain-Major of the Sea of India, Martim Afonso de Sousa, whom he accompanied for four years, in campaigns on sea and land on the west coast of India, that took him from Diu to Ceylon and to the coast of Cambay. Orta went on an expedition to the region of Gujarat, was in the ports of northern India as well as inland, crossing the peninsula of Kathiawar, from Diu to Ahmedabad. He visited Concan, Canara and Malabar. At the end of 1538, Martim Afonso de Sousa returned to Portugal and Garcia de Orta stayed in Goa. He was the physician of viceroys, royal governors and Indian potentates. Orta was also a merchant, namely of drugs or of products of a medical nature, and owned his own ship.

This work by Garcia de Orta was selected for “Exhibition no. 3, The European Discoveries: From the New World to New Technologies“, organized for the project “European Digital Treasures”.

“Colóquio dos simples” front page

The document’s complete description, produced by the archive that holds it, the Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, is available online and can be accessed here.

This new merchandising product was created by the Portuguese designers Diogo Bessa, Mário Fonseca and Ana Catarina Silva, of the School of Design of the Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave (IPCA), and the several stages of the process of creation and development are shown in this video.

Lucília Runa, Senior  Archivist / E-administration and innovation, General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libraries, Portugal

Ana Isabel Fernandes (trad.), Senior Technician / Communication Office, Torre do Tombo National Archive, General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libraries, Portugal

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Merchandise product: Regiment of the declination of the sun

We present another design product inspired by the documents chosen for transmedia exhibitions of the European Digital Treasures project.

Its creators are the designers Diogo Bessa, Mário Fonseca and Ana Catarina Silva, from the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave.

Regiment of the declination of the sun, 1564

The source of inspiration for this product was the “Regiment of the declination of the sun which goes in letters that mean the name of Sir Fernão Lopes Martins Freire de Andrade and his daughter Lady Isabel Freire“, whose holder is Torre do Tombo, the National Archive of Portugal. This Portuguese document from 1564 is a type of nautical document, from the age of discoveries, intended to allow the calculation of the vessel’s latitude to its pilots. Thus, they had, for each day of the year, the necessary corrections to compensate for the sun’s declination when measuring their meridian height.

The illuminated capital letters and marbled endpapers of the binding inspired the drawings of the new merchandise product, an écharpe, presented in a transparent envelope, which is 100% recycled material, containing contextual information about the document that inspired it and about the National Archive of Torre do Tombo.

The following video presents the various stages of the creation and development process of this product.

ÉCHARPE, Portugal, Designers Diogo Bessa; Mário Fonseca; Ana Catarina Silva

Written by Mário Sant’Ana, Senior Technician / E-administration and innovation and
Ana Isabel Fernandes (trad.), Senior Technician / Communication Office,
Torre do Tombo National Archive,
General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libraries, Portugal

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The merchandise products: Plan of a machine to raise fresh water from the river to the Alcazar of Toledo and supply the city

Continuing with our series of presentations of the merchandise products, we want to show you the bottle of water inspired by the document “Plan of a machine to raise fresh water from the river to the Alcazar of Toledo and supply the city” 1561 – Simancas General Archive (Spain) that will be part of the exhibition “European Discoveries: From the New World to New Technologies” in the framework of the European Digital Treasures project.

Commissioned by the Spanish State Archives, the designer Ángel Merlo was in charge of creating this product.

Historical background

Plan of a machine to raise fresh water from the river to the Alcazar of Toledo. 1561. General Archive of Simancas (Spain)

Giovanni Turriano, born in Italy in 1500, was a mathematician, astronomer, inventor, watchmaker and engineer. He began his career as a watchmaker in Milan. Later he began working at the service of Emperor Carlos V. And then he began working as a civil engineer paid by the monarchy. In 1565 he was hired to build an engine to supply the Alcázar of Toledo with fresh water from the nearby Tajo river. He succeeded in building it in three years, and it was done so well that he was hired to build another one. The machine was at the time the highest water elevator in the world, providing Toledo with 17 cubic meters of water a day raised from 100 m below.

Inspiration

Glass bottle, Spain. Designer: Ángel Merlo

The Spanish designer Ángel Merlo took the drawing on this record as an inspiration to create a product for domestic or sport use. The bottle is made of glass and stainless steel with circular screen printing in black around it, protected with a softshell sleeve personalised with the Digital Treasures logo. The description and data of the product are printed on the label.

In the designer’s own words: “The document prompted me to create a product related to the transportation of water, but more modern and simple. I chose to make a bottle because I wanted it to be a practical item to use on a daily basis and thus give more visibility to the European Digital Treasures “brand”. Besides, it had to be a viable product, not very expensive to produce. Then I looked for the appropriate glass of water and the way to personalise it. I rejected the idea of putting a label of paper because of the lack of durability and I made a circular serigraphy by treating and vectorising the original image.”

 Spanish State Archives

You can find more info about the record and the designer here:

Diseño de un ingenio para subir agua del rio Tajo al Alcazar de Toledo y proveer a la ciudad (ES-47161-AGS2 – ES-47161-AGS-UD-13790) on www.archivesportaleurope.net

https://angelmerlo.es/

 

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The merchandise products: Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado, 1571

ÉCHARPE, Portugal, Designers Diogo Bessa;
Mário Fonseca; Ana Catarina Silva

We present another designer product born within the framework of the European Digital Treasures project. Its creators are the designers Diogo Bessa, Mário Fonseca e Ana Catarina Silva, from the Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave (IPCA). Their source of inspiration was one of the several folios of  the atlas of Fernão vaz Dourado, dated 1571, whose holder is  the Torre do Tombo National Archive (ANTT).

The full description of the Atlas is available on line, as well as the images of the different folios that compose it (https://digitarq.arquivos.pt/details?id=4162624).

Atlas of Fernão Vaz Dourado, 1571

About its author, Fernão Vaz Dourado (c. 1520-c.1580), we know he was a soldier and one of the three portuguese cartographers probably born and formed in Portuguese India. He mapped the known world of Europeans at the time, the coastline of the continents visited by sailors along their voyages. With the exception of polar zones, the only missing elements are the costs of some islands in Oceania (including Australia and some islands north of this continent) the North and North East coasts of Asia (north of Japan) and the entire North West region of North America, as well as the interior of the continents.

However, and according to what is known in our days about the cartographic workshops, such works could have been the product of a slow, complex, segmented and collective effort.

The new merchandise product is an écharpe, presented in an transparent envelope, which is 100% recycled material, containing contextual information about the document that gave rise to it and about the National Archive.

Lucília Runa, Senior Technician / E-administration and innovation, General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libaries, Portugal

The different stages of its creation and development process are presented in the following video:

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The merchandise products: Antique heroes & Roman matrons

Thirdly, but not least, we present one more inspiring designer product of the European Digital Treasures project. It is made by Zsófia Neuzer, a Hungarian designer charged with designing by the National Archives of Hungary.

As the designer wrote, “After reading István Kővágó’s referendum summarising the events of the 1956 revolution before the UN Special Committee, the plan for an attention-grabbing, outspoken product line was immediately outlined. The text describes Hungarian civilians marching and fighting on the streets with an anachronistic analogy, specifically:

‘… I have to interpret a nation’s bloodwritten epos using the language of reality. A fight in which the characters exceeded average human level, in which 14-year-old children modelled antique heroes, 70-year-old grandmothers as old Roman matrons.’

I highlighted and placed the terms ‘antique hero’ and ‘Roman matron’ as text elements on T-shirts, complete with illustrations of antique figures in red. The set consists of organic cotton T-shirts, stickers and washable tattoos.

The product line draws attention to the importance of critical thinking, as I consider it very important that the original purpose of the document – storytelling –, could be widely realized and given great publicity by stepping out onto the street with creating new dialogues.”

Dorottya Szabó, senior archivist, National Archives of Hungary