1970s
Clothing as a social document in 1970s Spain
Analyzes how museum and academic sources allow the study of 1970s fashion in Spain not as a uniform trend, but as a complex social practice linked to identity and urban context.
Design and the visual languages of everyday life
Latest additions
1980s
Reading a Toy Beyond Its Rarity
An object, its documentation and signs of use raise questions about play. The available sources support this approach, but do not identify instructions or uses for a particular toy.
2000s
From Archive to Museum: The Transformation of Advertising Design into Heritage
Analyzes how design and advertising pieces transition from archival documents to museum objects, exploring the functional and contextual decisions that define their heritage value.
1990s
The Paper That Waits: How the Archive Redefines Comic Reading
Analyzes how preservation conditions and archival management transform the perception of comic magazines, shifting them from consumer objects to cultural documents that require specific context to be understood.
Before 1950
A catalogue can identify a collectible, not tell its whole story
Museum records can help locate specific albums and collectibles, but identifying an item is not enough to reconstruct a series, its variants or the networks through which collectors exchanged pieces. What a catalogue can establish—and what requires further documentation.
Contemporary
A biscuit tin cannot tell us who opened it
Preserved tins, food-related archives and projects on the history of eating document different aspects of the table. Reading them together helps separate commercial imagery from what we can actually establish about domestic habits.
2000s
Arranging the Gaze Is Also a Design Decision
A design and advertising archive does more than preserve objects: its selection and arrangement shape what we can read in them. A guide to distinguishing documentation from interpretation.
Before 1950
Reading a Sign Beyond Its Appearance
A study of commercial lettering and typography in Zaragoza between 1880 and 1889 raises a functional question: what can letters, their arrangement and the documents preserving them tell us? A careful reading separates what the evidence shows from what can only be interpreted.
1970s
A comics magazine changes meaning when its setting changes
Spanish comics magazines of the 1970s and 1980s can be studied not only through their pages, but also through the places where they were read and are remembered. The available evidence supports that approach, but does not identify specific format or editorial changes for individual titles.
Contemporary
Recipes, labels and packaging: what an archive can tell us about food
Cookbooks, packaging and documents make food available for study as material culture, but they cannot by themselves prove what people ate or how they prepared it. A careful reading distinguishes commercial claims from domestic practices and considers what each source leaves out.
Contemporary
Preserved clothes can illuminate an era, but cannot dress it in its entirety
Photographs, documents and garments make it possible to study fashion as a social practice, provided we do not mistake a collection for a representative sample of what everyone wore. The Lorenzo Caprile archive and collection offer a starting point for considering what is preserved and what it can prove.
Contemporary
Format also shapes the rhythm of reading
Magazines, fanzines, mini-comics, albums and graphic novels name different formats. Drawing on a study devoted to these categories, this piece cautiously explores how support, length and page organization can guide reading, while distinguishing those questions from what the available sources cannot establish.
