“This press has a special story—it was your parents’ wedding gift. I asked the client to deposit the money directly into your mother’s account, and that’s how they paid for the celebration.”
Meanwhile, he shows me a photograph of a press installed in Gijón in ’92. That’s how a lovely interview with Carles Ribes Fabregat, the “father” of Tórculos Ribes, began.
But let’s start at the beginning. It was 1941 when Jaime Ribes, a man from Lleida with a war behind him, better known as “avi Jaume,” was working in maintenance at a factory on Almogàvers Street (then Almogávares) in Barcelona. At the end of his workday, he would head to a makeshift workshop on Llacuna Street and watch the work being done on the lathe in order to learn. One day, he asked the elderly man who ran the workshop if he could spare a small space for welding services, and the man—being a good person—agreed. He did, however, warn Jaime that it wouldn’t get him very far, since a highly respected, long-established welding company was just a couple of streets away. Jaime left his maintenance job at the factory, borrowed 150 pesetas from the neighbor below (who actually had money), and bought a torch and a few other tools, all of which fit in an esparto basket. A hammer, a cold chisel, and the torch were his entire work setup. He also had to go to Carburos Metálicos to buy acetylene and oxygen for welding, which was no easy task, so he had to offer some financial incentive (10 pesetas were enough at the time) just to get a gas bottle and an oxygen cylinder. And there he sat, in his borrowed space on Llacuna Street. Until one day a client came, another day two, and soon enough his family could live off what he earned. After a few months, instead of asking him for welding, clients requested an iron container for cooking chocolate, a shelf, or any metal construction requiring quality welding. He didn’t have much to offer, but quality was never lacking. And there, under the chimney still preserved on the communication campus of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Jaime’s 15-year-old son, Carlos Ribes, began working. Over the years, he gradually took on more responsibilities, allowing “avi Jaume,” tired from war and life, to entrust his son with the care of the esparto basket.
Then came the day that led to the moment I am writing about: a regular client jokingly asked, “Hey Carlos, could you make me a press?” As you can imagine, it was the first time Carlos had ever heard the word. They went to the Instituto de Estudios Norteamericanos on Via Augusta, where, at the time, an American artist was exhibiting a state-of-the-art press. Carlos knew he could make one of those machines—and even improve it. Instead of making one, he decided to make two. Instead of selling one, he sold two. He made presses for Ediciones Polígrafa, for renowned artists like Chillida, and for art schools… and gradually carved out a name for himself in the printmaking world, learning from clients and improving his product day by day.
Among other things, he noticed the hardness of the flywheels, which forced artists to use a bar to turn them more easily, inserting it between the spokes and often breaking the flywheel. That’s why he replaced the two flywheels with four metal bars, which were later replaced by a single movable bar.
As he showed me photographs and specifications of the presses from those days, he explained his back problems caused by carrying the rollers in an era when elevators and cranes were uncommon.
“Every press has its story,” he told me. “There was a TVE program hosted by Julia Otero (later replaced by Isabel Gemio) where each participant chose a prize and, depending on the prize, the difficulty of the questions varied.” Can you guess what one of them chose? That’s right—a press. Carlos was surprised when the show contacted him to buy a press, transport it to the Canary Islands, and send a crane to install it in the artist’s studio. That’s how Tórculos Ribes sold a press to TVE, and for one week in the summer of ’88 it appeared on television every midday. What’s more curious is that Carlos, at the time, was spending the last days of his vacation in his Torredembarra apartment and wasn’t about to give up his final hours at the beach. So he didn’t make a big deal of it and carried on with his summer routine. As he says, “It’s like playing blind man’s buff: sometimes you get picked. Honestly, I’m more thrilled that a great artist like Antón Pulido calls one of our presses ‘my Gran Torino’ than about being on TV. All this about the presses started as a joke, and I honestly don’t feel particularly proud—it was just my job.”
Today, Carlos Ribes visits the company once a week, now run by his son, who continues to bring these little beasts to life—a story we will explore more in upcoming posts. What began with an esparto basket and three basic tools, unintentionally, became what we are now: Tórculos Ribes.
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