Two birds - birds of paradise? - drink water from a diamond bowl, from which drops twinkling like stars fall; Both birds are made on a platinum thread tulle so fine that their diamond feathers and the splashes of diamonds seem to vibrate in space without any support: we are talking about a piece of high jewelry, a “neckline closure” made by Joaquim Cabot (1861-1951) around 1905. A jewel of Catalan modernism on a par with those of Cartier or Fabergé of the belle époque.
“My grandfather dreamed of a glass cage in which singing birds fluttered,” summarizes his great-great-grandson Carlos Soler-Cabot, the main architect of the rescue of the figure and work of his great-great-grandfather, an avant-garde from the most splendid era of Barcelona, which the political turbulence in Catalonia tried to cloud it, and which is now exhibited in the Palau de la Música Catalana, the same palace that he and the architect Lluis Domènech i Montaner designed to give a home to the Orfeó Català and a runway for Catalan culture.
The exhibition La Barcelona universal by Joaquim Cabot, together with the book published with the same title, exhibits recovered pieces and documents that his great-great-grandson has been searching for years like an archaeologist, diving in second-hand bookstores, official and private archives, in the collections of the Palau itself and also on the internet. And he has done it with the same passion with which his ancestor, jeweler, artist, tertullian, poet, financier, president of the Orfeó and the Chamber of Commerce, creator of the Trade Fair, undertook his projects.
“It has been a romantic adventure, and also an act of justice for a figure of great historical importance that times of apathy tend to bury,” says Carlos Soler-Cabot (1982), who today champions, together with his father José Luis, the vocation for excellence and self-creation of the long-standing family firm, shaken like so many by many decades of financial and cultural ups and downs. It is currently the only Spanish jewelry brand to have an office on the Antwerp Diamond Exchange, and to hold the title of numbered and titled member of the Superior Diamond Council.
With these merits, and the knowledge of the gems that he carries in his blood, how could the great-great-grandson not recover the work, the time and the spirit of his ancestor Joaquim Cabot, a man from Barcelona as his artist and friends called him? their bourgeois fellow members? How could he not be a designer and carver himself, and aspire to create unique jewelry that, under his surname, would be his best? And most importantly, why not try to recover the specialization of those craftsmen who are necessary for the manufacture of jewelry pieces as perfect and modern as those produced by Modena?
The saga of this jewelery family began a few centuries ago, but was consolidated after the Universal Exhibition in Barcelona in 1888, in the workshop on Argenteria Street and later on Ferrán Street, where Joaquim Cabot learned the trade from his father, Francesc. . An ideal time and place for a young Cabot hiker, music lover and with a heart that beats with the innovative pulse of that city of wonders, as the writer Eduardo Mendoza called it.
He soon traveled to Paris, Egypt and the Middle East. Back in the workshop, he demands the return of the essence of popular cultures and the work of trades, guilds and brotherhoods. Barcelona is a hotbed of artisans, joined by artists, writers, thinkers, architects and entrepreneurs. They meet at the Els Quatre Gats gathering, where they talk and debate. Where, also, they designate who is going to direct what. Thus the name of the very modern jeweler Joaquim Cabot arises to preside over the Orfeó Català, a project of cultural, integrative and diverse unity.
Our man's dream begins to come true when he decides to finance, with his own and other people's money, the construction of a modernist house for the music lovers of the world. In 1905 Cabot engraved his signature, along with other notables, on the first stone, and in 1908 the Palau was inaugurated, guarded by the eighteen muses sculpted under the organ and whose production he supervised, on site.
A women's magazine published in 1910: “An artist unknown to us one day devised the pendant or pendentif, one of the most beautiful jewels that can be found.” Jewelry goes from Plaza Catalunya to Gran Vía de las Corts, Joaquim Cabot goes from modernism to art deco without undermining style and quality: preciousness, symmetry and magic tricks thanks to the fineness of the threads of the excellent filador d'or, which is what Jacinto Verdaguer called him. He was very careful, but disappointed by the political history of his land, he retired during the civil war, and died in 1951 without public vindication of his figure. Until today, when a tribute exhibition concocted by his great-great-grandson recovers it.
