This publication is intended to, once again, promote, spread and increase the value of older and even some of the most primitive techniques of working with clay that in the Azores is sublimated in traditional pottery, tile factories, faience industries and also in domestic production units. It’s one more certified production under the collective brand “Artesanato dos Açores” (Handicraft of the Azores), registered in book and part of a collection of historical, technical and promotional character of the Regional Centre for Handicrafts that’s been editing since 1998, covering a wide range of traditional handicraft activities of the Azores.
The study carried out by the Regional Centre for Handicrafts for the certification of the Azorean Pottery, specifically its most genuine productions in pottery, faience and figurines, provided the systematic survey of this important part of our cultural heritage, and institutionalized and particular, allowing it to be a target of subsequent research, technical studies and interventions bringing together a number of disparate information, little known, but valuable in historical and ethnographic terms. It is, therefore, a tribute to all anthropologists and scholars from various fields that have kept this knowledge and ancestral techniques, including the Professor Doctor Rui de Sousa Martins, with important and essential studies and initiatives for the development and promotion of our ethnographic heritage, particularly in the traditional Azorean ceramic production. It should also pay tribute to all the potters that in the Azores chose this way to express their art, continuing the tradition and adding economic and cultural value. It should also thank the invaluable institutional collaboration that was manifested in the personal commitment of the directors of the Museums of Santa Maria, Angra do Heroismo, Graciosa and Pico, the Chairman of the Parish Council of Altares, of the Island of Terceira, as well as the coordinators of the Regional Secretariat of Economy of those islands and also to all who crossed with us on this path of the history of pottery of the Azores and wanted to share some of their knowledge, memories and heritage.