"We work exclusively on faithful replicas of secular nautical charts."
"At the beginning of the 1980's we decided to join our respective workshops and work together. We selected certain techniques we knew from sculpting and painting, and applied them to the reproduction of historical nautical charts and maps on leather. We built our office in the vicinity of Rio de Janeiro and eventually the need arose to have assistants working with us. Since then, we've created close to 5,000 maps and charts.
"We work exclusively on faithful replicas of secular nautical charts and maps. In Brazil, having been a Portuguese colony, we have access to a valuable collection of replicas from nautical charts that once belonged to the Portuguese Crown. They are now catalogued in the National Library. We add images and illustrations pertaining to the period in which the chart was first made, in order to make it more decorative.
"The creative process begins with choosing the chart we wish to replicate, which can be English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, or Dutch, for example. Then we select the ideal piece of leather; for this type of work, we need the best leather the market has to offer. The 'fire-engraving' technique for leather was used by many ancient cultures, including Europe and the American continent. The Kadweu tribe of Brazil also used this technique to print sophisticated ritualistic images. We use this technique to print our charts, and then we paint them with colors favored at the original time of printing.
"Demand for our charts has grown throughout the year, both nationally and internationally. We've received commissions from several maritime companies, the Brazilian Navy, the French and Greek Consulates as well as from Russian cosmonaut Alexander Serebov. Several dancers from the Bolshoi Ballet have also purchased our charts and even the former president of the Slav Republic, Mr. Rudolf Schuster."
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