Catalogo Treku magazine

T RE K U M A G A Z IN E H ow A l d a b a l d e t re k u b e c a me T re k u 14 15 give out in years to come as it ages. The Treku of today is technology and, above all, craft, a wood craft which, for over 500 years has been in the DNA of the carpenters of Zarautz. The Treku of today are the grandchildren of Jesús and its team is made up of carpenters, designers, sales reps and managers. In a corner of Treku’s offices, filled with the constant aroma of coffee, sits a wooden table of barely a square meter in size. It has no drawers nor additional units. It has a rectangular surface, smooth and austere, on which the accounting of days gone by was done; the painstaking work of the company’s figures and balances. It has been out of use for many, many years but is kept as a nostalgic reminder of what the company once was. Not far from this table is a worldmap with small flags pinned on it to mark the countries where Treku distributes its creations. There are more than fifty pins, representing the internationalisa- tion achieved in the past few years. If these pins were to be joined up by an imaginary thread, it would be possible to do a complete loop around the world. This loop began in 1947 with Jesús Aldabaldetrecu, the carpenter grandfather. It is an odyssey whose course is chosen by con- temporary and everlasting furniture produced in this rural neighbourhood of Zarautz where dawn always breaks a few moments later. It hasn‘t always been this way because Treku wasn’t always there. The company was estab- lished in 1947 in a modest industrial suburb very close to the Zarautz’s historic quarter by Jesús Aldabaldetrecu, the aitona (‘grandfather’ in Basque) of the current managers. His voca- tion was making bathroom furniture for the inhabitants of Zarautz but people soon started to call for his services from towns all over the Basque Country. Although Jesús created classic and simple furniture, he was highly valued by clients who appreciated his conscientiousness, his integrity and his taste for details. After he retired, his children expanded the busi- ness: they transformed the small carpentry work- shop into a modern factory and began selling their products across Europe. Treku grew and moved to a new 12.000 square meter factory in the Olaa neighbourhood of Zarautz, and with it emerged the first signs of the subtlety of the furniture design which today characterises all their collections. The Treku of today is the lovechild of yester- day’s experience and tomorrow’s ideas. “Modern machinery might take up most of the factory’s surface, but fingers and eyes are still at the heart of the production process”. It is these fingers and eyes which select knots and grains in the oak veneers; which are responsible for making a piece of furniture gleam the best ochre which characterizes walnut; or which are capable of dis- tinguishing the pink hues that American oak will “Modern machinery might take up most of the factory’s surface but fingers and eyes are still at the heart of the production process”. The designer Ibon Arrizabalaga and the technician Asier Manterola during the creative process.