The PillowBag is a vintage pillowcase repurposed into a purse. When you open up the “Garden of Earthly Delights” triptych by Bosch, limits only exist in what remains out of our sight. In this painting, all the delights, religiously envisioned as sins, present themselves originally with no hint of shame. The same happens in our dreams, where the unconscious juggles freely and unlimitedly.
This is the question that has inspired the creation of the PillowBag, the first piece designed by The Foyer.
The Pillowbag stands on the following pillars:
Uniqueness:
it is handmade, using original vintage pillowcases, each one with its singular design.
Originality:
it shows how narrative is capable of bending an object’s design and purpose, giving rise to a whole new item.
Functional beauty:
its grace does not only emanate from its carefully curated aesthetics, but also from the relevance placed on its usefulness and longevity.
Sustainability:
it emerges from the upcycling of a vintage pillowcase repurposed in collaboration with local manufacturers.
Karen Joaquín
Karen Joaquín
Karen Joaquín
Narrative
The PillowBag represents the possibility to put all your dreams and your delights into a bag and bring them along with you, in the privacy of your own purse, until your desired destination.
Like Bosch’s painting, the prevailing colors are pink, green, and blue, which are discovered upon opening the bag, in the intimacy of your delights. These colors melt into the whiteness of the pillowcase bringing the bed to the streets.
The pillowcase used to create the “PillowBag 01” belonged to Maria Dolors Serra, an ancestor of Marta and Blanca whose initials are embroidered on it. Despite living in a completely different era, she most likely shared, when sleeping, the same dreams and delights as nowadays women.
The PillowBag represents the duality of humans and also of a bed: the purest and cleanest of forms as well as those most intimate, bizarre and sometimes even obscure. It also portrays reality and dreams and how they feed off each other every day and every night.
Design
Packaging: the Pillowbag’s pillowcase
It is an origami design inspired by Victorian puzzle purses. Lovers used them during the Victorian era to send each other love letters. Just as in the “Garden of Earthly Delights” triptych,
the message reveals as you unfold the piece. The packaging itself acts as the PillowBag’s certificate of authenticity and it becomes a poster when you unfold it completely. It consists of one single sheet made of recycled paper to ensure that the whole product is sustainable.
The Foyer
The Foyer
The Foyer
Karen Joaquín
Retrospective
The Pillowcase
It all starts in the head. Or the head rest. A look back in history unveils the preciousness with which it has been accommodated for its journey to slumberland. Beyond function, the pillowcase emerges as a design object of beauty, care, and originality.
Germany 18th century
Ancient Egypt
China, Jin Dynasty (1115-1234)
Japan (undated)
Man Ray’s Sleeping Woman
Man Ray sleeping, by Lee Miller
Lee Miller sleeping, by Man Ray
The surrealists
Fast asleep, the artist creates. In the early 20th century, the act of dreaming was intellectually elevated in Western culture thanks to the rise of psychotherapy. The Surrealists echoed this sentiment in art. What happens in the asleep mind, a cacophony of images and meanings, takes center stage.
René Magritte’s The Menaced Assassin
Leonora Carrington’s On the House Opposite
Four Women Asleep (including Leonora Carrington)
René Magritte, asleep
The sleeping beauties, in nature
When sleep comes, the mind goes. The darkness and austerity of a bedroom might give way to a garden: a place of ingenuity, freedom, and relaxation. In the safety of nature the locus amoenus we let go of convention, and perhaps, indulge in fantasy.
Picnic At Hanging Rock
Spirited Away
The Wizard of Oz
Body and Soul
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Halfway between reality and fiction, like a lucid dream, this masterpiece speaks of desire, lust, imagination, entertainment, debauchery, and chaos. A portrait of humanity.
Yan Bo’s Garden Girl
Isa Genzken’s Rose II
The dreams
A dream is who we are. Art speaks of fantasies that happen somewhere between the bed, the mind, and outer/outdoor space. In their impossibility, each artwork responds to the same premise of The Garden of Earthly Delights: we contain multitudes.
Maria Berrios’s Anemochory
Yayoi Kusama’s A Dream I Dreamed
Wycliffe Mundopa’s The Garden of Earthly Delights
Frida Kahlo’s The Dream (The Bed)
Cy Twombly’s Untitled (The Mathematical Dream of Ashurbanipal)
Joan Miró’s Woman Dreaming of Escape
McCall catalog, 1946
Chloe Wise’s Bread Bag
Maryam Yousif’s Cosmic Handbag
The bag
In a bag, we carry who we are. The fashion of carrying an external, visible bag, was the subject of ridicule at the onset of the 19th century in Europe and would be defined later on by Freud as a display of female sexuality. As an appendix of the self, the bag can be a weapon, a shield, an invitation, or an accomplice. A bag’s content keeps on changing just like our minds, and our dreams.
Chuck Ramirez’s Purse Portrait Series
Yayoi Kusama’s bags for Louis Vuitton
French reticule, 19th century
Mariette Pathy Allen’s Orange Handbag
Japanese Inro, ca. 1775-1850
PillowBag conceptualized by The Foyer
PillowBag designed by The Foyer & Emma Picanyol
PillowBag handmade by Emma Picanyol
3D PillowBag created by Jatomart
Sensuous Plants illustrated by Pia Callís
Retrospective edited and curated by Andrea Servert
