Typical vintage regional ceramic from Alcobaça, Portugal. Handpainted.

Brand: O.A.L. (Olaria de Alcobaça)

Condition: like new

Stockist: Porto, Portugal

History: In 1927, Silvino Ferreira da Bernarda, one of the six children of Manuel Ferreira da Bernarda (family already connected to Alcobaça ceramics through the company Raul da Bernarda), and the two brothers António and Joaquim Vieira Natividade, created the company Olaria de Alcobaça, Lda. (OAL). From that date, Olaria de Alcobaça began an authentic period of renovation of ceramic production, developing a product that was directed towards the technical and artistic requalification of ceramics, in copies of old pieces and also investing on modernist pieces, especially until 1947. One of the factors for the renewal of ceramic production is the appearance of designer pieces. Differentiating itself from the production of common tableware, Olaria de Alcobaça created replicas of ceramic pieces from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, producing the design of the pieces in the collections of the main museums. Some initial pieces from Olaria de Alcobaça, the ornamental ceramics, point to a renewal in the type of objects - jars, pots, lamp bases, decorative plates - and in the decorative field, turning to be naturalistic, with fanciful design elaborations. The strongly simplified forms, with spherical and cylindrical volumes, can encompass straight, prismatic and pyramidal volumes. The decoration is surrounded by vegetal motives, in naturalist registers, involving all the pieces or delimiting them in well-drawn bars, separated by the intense polychrome or scale of the motifs. The pieces of Lisbon production "Monte Sinai", were highly appreciated models, distinguished by the strong blue in contrast to the white. The copy and interpretation of the shapes of “Ratinho” dishes - named because of being sold, at reasonable prices, to workers from "Beiras" (regions of Portugal), who moved seasonally to the south of the country to assist in agricultural activities - originating in Coimbra, with great circulation in late 19th and early 20th century, will give rise to pieces of taste and popular manufacture of powerful expressiveness. In the last years of the 1930s and the early 1940s, Olaria de Alcobaça pieces were successful in the Brazilian and American markets, declining from 1948, when the impositions of customers prevailed and aesthetic models with quality were not imposed. In 1959, João da Bernarda, applied at Olaria de Alcobaça the aesthetic teachings of artistic ceramics, learned in Paris and takes a bold decision in the creation of a line of decorative objects, which were exposed at the 1st Industrial Fair in Lisbon. The exhibited objects clearly distanced themselves from the Portuguese and popular prototype, quite different from what would later be called Alcobaça tableware. The company O.A.L. ended in 1984.