Creative Heritage with Imprenta Nueva Balear
This week, with the yacht-racing season in the Northern Hemisphere in its zenith, we spotlight “Primer Crucero al Litoral de Mallorca, 1931”; a seminal sports poster which has sailed into our Top 100 since The Archives Design Group first restored, augmented and re-launched it in 2022.
Illustrated by Palma-born draftsman Josep Malbertí Marroig on order of the predecessor to the modern day Real Club Nautico de Palma to promote the first official race around Mallorca´s 555km (344 mile) coastline, the elegant, Art Nouveau-style original letterpress and lithography for the commissioned piece was designed and printed by Imprenta Nueva Balear.
If you are on Mallorca and you order a Stick No Bills® officially licensed limited edition of this artwork today, your uniquely numbered and embossed Hahnemühle print will be produced by the same family operating the same machines in the same space where the first print run was generated 93 years ago.
It is this profound sense of genesis - of playing an integral ´upcycling´ role in a unique and multigenerational heritage preservation project - which makes our joint venture with sister and brother Belén and Roberto Aguiló Moro, the 4th generation co-directors of the oldest active Printworks in the Western Mediterranean, so fulfilling.
13 hours, 15 minutes and 17 seconds is the current yacht-racing record time to circumnavigate Mallorca. This amounts to an approximate total triangulated distance covered of 160 nautical miles around the island’s jagged 555 km coastline.
Flash back to 1931 and the very first generation of J-Class yachts would have taken around 24 hours with optimal conditions and a maximum sailing speed of 12 knots. Astonishingly this is under one quarter of the maximum velocity of the present day’s AC 75s; carbon fibre monohull vessels that appear more like flying machines than sailboats to the lay person’s eye as they foil high above the surface of the ocean at hitherto unthinkable speeds approaching 90kph. Pinnacles of modern day engineering and technology just like their J-Class fore-bearers once were, these formidable sailing machines are getting set to compete imminently in a series of races which culminate in Barcelona in October. Which team, we wonder, will win?
Back in Palma de Mallorca we’re open Monday through Friday from 10 to 8pm. Come and find us right next to El Corte Inglés on Avenidas. We’d be delighted to give you a tour.
