Cristina Thió i Lluch – Chroma Restauració
TELEPHONE:
ADDRESS:
Calle d’Escudellers Blancs 3 bis, baixos 08002
ACTIVITY
Cristina Thió, founder of Chroma, is a specialist in archaeology and a devotee of painting techniques, murals and traditional craft expertise.
She has 30 years’ experience of restoring elements from various periods – Romanesque, Gothic or Art Nouveau; of laying patterned cement flooring with mosaic or… Nolla tiles; of restoring Baroque, classical or Art Nouveau renders; of consolidating polychrome work on plaster and masonry, with fresco, mezzo-secco and secco lime painting; of working with casein paint, egg tempera or rabbit-skin glue; of polychrome work on new organs with traditional techniques; of working with gypsum and plaster on Art Nouveau ceilings with all sorts of mouldings and finishes; of conserving Baroque and Art Nouveau sgraffiti, characterising their aggregates, techniques and iconography; and of exploring all such artistic processes in other parts of the world and with other techniques.
The Chroma team resists the trend of a globalised world in which synthetic modern materials and cheap labour have become the norm. Cristina Thió advocates a thorough understanding and dissemination of the techniques of long-standing trades, to be preserved using traditional materials and tools.
TRAINING
Cristina Thió studied fine arts, with which she learned to appreciate and love traditional crafts and materials. After completing her degree and working at the Barcelona Centre for the Restoration of Artefacts, she founded Chroma with the aim of salvaging and reviving traditional techniques.
TEACHING
Cristina believes that traditional trades need to be supported not just through work but also with training. Parallel to her work as a restorer, she has always devoted time to training students from Spain and abroad assigned to her workshop through agreements with specialist schools.
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SELECTED WORK
Cristina Thió has worked on historic buildings from various periods. Examples of her many interventions over the years include:
Restoration of polychromy in Casa Rosa Piferrer, a 19th-century classicist building in Barcelona
Sgraffiti on Casa Dolors Calm, a 19th-century Art Nouveau building designated as a local cultural… heritage site
Volumetric reconstruction of a corbel at Hotel les Quatre Nacions i Passatge Bacardí, a 19th-century building in La Rambla, designated as a local cultural heritage site
Lime stuccos in the remodelling of a sundial on a farmhouse with architectural features from various periods, from the 15th to the 20th century
