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A BALLAD FROM SALENTO
BAXTER PRESENTS QUADERNO DI VIAGGIO SALENTO 2025
Baxter unveils its new Outdoor and Open-Air Collection through a book that differs from the traditional catalogue.
This volume offers a profound sensory and material exploration, rooted in the Salento landscape to inspire Outdoor and Open-Air design.
The project emphasizes material research, ensuring the uniqueness and durability of the collection’s pieces.
DISCOVER THE OPEN-AIR COLLECTION
Every land sings.
Yet, Salento sings a gentle melody.
Stop, undress, be silent.
Only then does it uncover your skin.
It gets into your bones like sea salt.
THE SCENTS
There’s a scent that follows you everywhere, here. It is the smell of stones heated by the sun, quicklime, juicy figs, and centuries-old olive trees. Inside the old rooms, a faint aroma of beeswax, iron, and wood-baked bread fills the air. Every room appears to hold the memory of everyday gestures: a cup still warm on the table, a curtain that smells of lavender and wind. In the sun-drenched countryside, the scent is harsher: red dust, salt, and wild herbs igniting under the heat.
THE SOUNDS
There are sounds that you can’t hear. Much like a silence that is weighty yet unburdensome. Inside the houses, you can only hear the squeak of the wood, the muffled sound of the footsteps on the floor, and the swish of the curtain moving slightly. Time seems to have withdrawn, like a distant sea. Every space appears suspended: neither full nor empty, simply waiting. And when a sound comes – a distant drum, a bell tower, the clatter of a shutting door – it is as though it speaks on behalf of all that endures.
THE LIGHT
The light here is fierce. It carves the streets, scorches the olive trees, moulds faces into ancient masks. It slips through a half-open window, bounces off the stone floors, and stretches over the walls like a slow breath. At dawn, it creeps in quietly, golden as oil, yet by noon it pierces the white of the walls, revealing every imperfection. In the rooms, it shapes voids, caresses forgotten objects, and turns dust into poetry. It doesn’t just show things. It questions them. It lays them bare.
THE SHAPES
The shapes tell stories as well. They don’t shout: they whisper, they live together, they endure. In the farmhouse, the geometries are unembellished: full arches, generous thicknesses, essential forms seemingly born from the sand and the sun. Though the interiors may appear empty, each room breathes, welcomes, and preserves the slow pace of those who have inhabited it. Just a few kilometres away, the Baroque enfolds like a feverish thought, an indispensable opulence. Hunger for beauty. On the facades of churches and palaces, shapes twist in an endless dance: angels, flowers, griffins, frames, and volutes that seem to speak. Two worlds seemingly set apart.
THE COLOURS
Consumed by time, faded by the sun, and layered with dust. Colours that do not shout, yet linger. White is never pristine: it is tainted by light, wind, and salt. It is a living white. The stone is honey yellow, antique pink, light ash. It changes every hour. Iron oxidizes and transforms into rust, wood fades into grey hues steeped in history. Inside the rooms the colours linger: dark leather, sheer curtains, the faded blue of a blanket, the dull yellow of a worn wall. Everything appears to be tinged with a memory that refuses to fade away. Beyond the walls, red soil, ash-coloured olive leaves. And when the sky opens up, it does so in shades blues that are as deep as silence.
Salento can’t be fully expressed in a single moment.
It must be learned like an ancient language,
word for word, silence after silence.
You don’t need to understand everything.
Just be here.
Sit where time slows down, touch with the eyes, breathe without haste.
PHOTO CREDIT Andrea Ferrari