TELEPHONE:
ADDRESS:
Calle José Posada Herrera nº 11 – 39300 Torrelavega
ACTIVITY
Leandro Postigo Fernández is an artisan woodturner. He does all his work by hand with traditional techniques, applying craftsmanship inherited by family tradition. His workshop remains on the site where his grandfather founded it in the Quebrantada neighbourhood in the centre of Torrelavega, steeped in… his family’s history in the craft, with old lathes as well as newer ones acquired over the years. He continues to use the tools of old, such as gouges, mortising chisels, flat chisels, beading tools and point chisels nearly a century old, as well as thickness, outside and Vernier callipers, marking gauges, assorted implements and stencils and countless turning templates and models accumulated over three generations.
Leandro is proud of his craft, though he feels a heavy responsibility in that it is up to him to keep alive his inherited craftsmanship, techniques and secrets in keeping with the standards of his father and grandfather. And this is a difficult time for craft trades with all but medieval methods, having to compete with increasing industrialisation in production processes.
He turns his workpieces wholly by hand, one by one, in line with the original where necessary to faithfully reproduce proportions. He can also follow scale drawings or technical photos of an original piece.
Millimetre precision in the diameters and other dimensions of reproduced parts involves a process starting with preparatory woodwork, with roughing and honing, followed by the turning itself and the final finish, with meticulous manual sanding. This requires more time and expense than that which goes into industrially turned items such as may be found in timber or hardware stores.
Leandro’s speciality, apart from bespoke items, is the recovery of traditional games and toys, such as spinning tops of all shapes and sizes, tuta (a game in which counters are tossed towards a peg), 9-pin bowling in all its varieties, such as the palma bowling popular in Cantabria and the many other variants played across Spain, with their corresponding skittles.
TRAINING
Leandro acquired his know-how from two previous generations of master woodturners. The family tradition goes back for over a century to when his grandfather Santiago Postigo settled in Torrelavega (an industrial town in the region of Cantabria) in the early 1900s. The tradition was continued… by his father, Leandro Postigo Saiz, and he took over thirty years ago.
TEACHING
Leandro would like to pass on his master woodturner’s know-how to future generations, though his workload has not allowed him time for teaching. But in his workshop he receives educational visits from school groups.
SELECTED WORK
His work is chiefly for furniture restoration workshops, cultural associations, museums, historic heritage sites, owners of private collections, cabinetmakers, sculptors, upholsterers, carvers, etc., who need to replace missing or damaged pieces.
He has performed restoration and interior design work for Lanwey, S.L., Mefa, S.L., the sculptor… Augusto Arana and the Cantabrian Roman archaeological site of Camesa-Rebolledo. He also does joinery and cabinetry, making balusters for stairs, rounded bars for balconies, table legs, pilasters, chair legs and furniture handles. He has also made drumsticks, musical instrument stands, spinning tops, judge’s gavels, pedestals, bishop’s crosiers, spindles, candleholders, etc., as well as skittles and bowling balls of all sorts, reviving traditional games for various organisations: the Cultural Association of La Tanguilla, the Traditional Games Museum in Campo (Huesca province), Palencia Provincial Council, the Cantabrian Government’s Department of Education, Culture and Sport, the Álava Bowling Federation, Burgos City Council, the Spanish Bowling Federation and the Cantabrian Bowling Federation.
