Alcobaça - Craquelê

It is thought that working with materials such as clay, kaolin or white stone has been practiced in Alcobaça since the Neolithic period. The polychrome clay sculptures, created by monks, appeared during the construction of the Alcobaça Monastery and in the 18th century the first pieces appeared with the word "Alcobaça" inscribed in the center. Later, in 1875, a ceramics factory was founded by José dos Reis, an artisan from Coimbra.

Today, Alcobaça pottery displays drawings of flowers, sayings and also landscapes but mostly flowers. The word “Alcobaça” is not always present and the drawings can be quite colorful and in shades of blue and green.

In our store, in addition to the traditional ceramics from Alcobaça, you can find a more "premium" version of this magnificent painting as the flowers are drawn in more detail and the piece is deliberately aged for aesthetic purposes, called "Craquelê".

Craquelê are the small cracks that form in the enamel. Cracks may be premature or due to the natural aging of the piece. Premature cracks (also called fissures) are produced by the drying of the pictorial layer. During drying, due to chemical processes such as oxidation, physical effects are produced in the pictorial layer, and only in it, which can reach the preparation layer, but without passing through it. The oldest cracks are produced by the aging of the painting layer by mechanical agents, generating cracks in the painting layer, which cover the pictorial layer and the preparation layer, even reaching the support of the work. Craquelé can also be created intentionally to obtain a certain texture or irregular pattern on a surface, such as ours. A different type of glass is used and after leaving the oven, after a few minutes of cooling the piece, the crackle effect is created.

Basically we managed to have the appearance of a century-old piece but new and much more detailed than conventional ones.