Handicraft

Handicraft is considered a process in which manual work predominates, although it is sometimes renewed through the use of machines that free the artisan from the hardest phases of the production process. Its production, however, is never carried out in series, as that characterizes industrialized techniques.

Handicraft is an activity in which human imagination and creativity play a central role, giving priority to the traits of popular culture. With growing economic importance in the lives of communities, artisanal activity generates objects of great expressiveness, beauty and utility, matching the characteristics of an increasingly demanding market that seeks personalized items with a specific cultural origin, linked to particular ways of thinking, feeling and acting, as well as to certain material conditions of existence. In the municipality of Vila Verde, handicraft is very diverse: “lenço de namorados” (sweetheart handkerchiefs), linen articles, weaving, basketry, wooden miniatures and toys, and musical instruments. Ceramic production is also an important activity in this municipality, characterized by the diversity of shapes and by its utilitarian nature, with special emphasis on decoration, where motifs from the “lenços de namorados” are represented.

Visiting these places provides an opportunity not only to purchase handcrafted products but also to discover the spaces, the production process and the artisans themselves.