CATALANS tend to be proud of their region's history, language and achievements, and it is no surprise that Catalan art is the focus of the Barcelona Design Museum. This newly opened institute brings together 70,000 pieces that were previously housed in four museums devoted to different aspects of the subject: textiles and fashion, graphics, ceramics and decorative arts. Around 3,000 of these works are exhibited over four floors of this new structure, which itself provides evidence of Catalan visual flair. The building, which was designed by a firm of local architects, is dominated by cantilevering, walls of floor-to-ceiling glass and transparent-sided escalators. Admission is free until the end of January, and a wide mix of ages and personal styles has been attracted to the new museum—not everyone wears the top-to-toe black favoured by fanciers of architecture and design (and, it must be said, this correspondent). Objects range from fourth-century Coptic textiles to contemporary jewellery and glass. A lipstick-red, Barcelona-made 1962 Impala motorcycle (pictured below) has plenty of va-va-voom, but a black-and-gold coach (circa 1750) also inspires thoughts of fantasy drives, albeit ones taken in powdered wigs not black leather. There are chandeliers, gilded chests, art-nouveau and art-deco furnishings. A large tile frieze (1710) shows vignettes of the 18th-century rage for chocolate-drinking among Barcelona’s aristocracy. Ceramics by Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró, poor and young when they lived in Barcelona, are included, as are fine examples of the very different creations of Cristobel Balenciaga and Paco Rabanne—another pair of 20th-century Spaniards who made their names in Paris. An ethereal embroidered and sequinned Balenciaga nightdress of 1958 and a late 1960s Rabanne chain-mail halter dress are part of a chronological display of catwalk fashions.

Catalonia’s power and influence peaked in the Middle Ages: Catalan was spoken from north of the Pyrenees across the Mediterranean to Sardinia and beyond. Some visitors will want to compare the medieval objects in the Design Museum, among them banners, small caskets and decorative earthenware, to the magnificent medieval paintings and sculptures in the nearby National Museum of Catalan Art. The 19th century was another period of great endeavours as Catalonia embraced and exploited the Industrial Revolution. Among the results on display at the Design Museum are wallpapers, textiles, posters and furniture—the kinds of objects celebrated by Barcelona’s Universal Exhibition of 1888, Spain’s first international World’s Fair. (Some of its buildings became the city’s first museums, depositories of the objects that are now on view here.)

There are a good many foreign pieces, too. French fans, Venetian glass and Genevan watches provide context and comparisons. Some awkwardly parochial choices have been made, among them a hand-held mixer (1959) apparently noteworthy because it was the first to be marketed in Spain. But in general the abundance of Catalan and Spanish objects is rewarding and eye-opening. Pretty, gilded, 18th-century “headboards” with central medallions of saints turn out to have been used as altars, not beds. A washing machine (1997) designed by Enric Sardá Sacristán with a blue body, red top and yellow window is so jolly it promises to make laundry fun. Most surprising and curious of all may be a white shopping trolley, the first to be “made of single mould-injected polypropylene”. Designed by Ramón Benedito (1997), it is haunting rather than banal. It seems to be an indestructible emissary from an otherworldly supermarket.