Chapter 1

Beginnings

In the winter of 2014, Elena Marchetti hauled a secondhand wheel up four flights of stairs in Alfama. By day she restored azulejo tiles; by night she threw bowls until the downstairs neighbours learned to sleep through the hum.

The first pieces sold from a fold-out table at the Feira da Ladra flea market — eleven bowls, one Sunday, gone by noon. The money bought more clay, and the ritual repeated, market to wheel to market, for two straight years.

Chapter 2

Growth

In 2017 the studio moved into a former printing house by the river and hired its first three makers. The wholesale list grew from two neighbourhood cafés to forty stockists across Europe.

Growth, for us, has never meant speed. It meant a second kiln, a proper glaze lab, and the room to say no — to seasons, to trends, to anything that would rush the clay.

Today twelve of us share the wheels, the long lunch table and the kiln log. The bowls still come off the wheel one at a time.

Frames from the workshop, shot over a decade. Tap any image to view it large.