Set of 12 ceramic tiles of different sizes, made of various types of sandstone, with motifs inspired by contemplating the agricultural landscape. The 12 tiles form a narrative, like a puzzle in which each person can build their own story, with different nuances depending on the light around the piece.
The contemplation of the landscape, the place and everything that delights us about the fields and the countryside reveals the textures of the land – the furrows left when the tractor travels over it, the cracked earth left by drought, the olive trees, straw, wheat, sticks, seeds – textures that create the whole setting that Mafalda Fidalgo imprints in her pieces.
The first step is to collect these materials – trunks, straw, and so on – in nature. The textures, small impressions of landscapes etched in the piece, appear in low relief projections, bringing the imagination of rurality to our homes and giving the pieces the eternity of time.
A piece inspired by two features of traditional Portuguese agriculture: the bowl, widely used in the countryside for kneading bread dough, preparing sausages and many other tasks, and the trilho [implement used for threshing corn]. The bowl gives the shape, albeit in a more stylized contemporary interpretation; the trilho, gives the different textures in the decoration of the piece, which evokes the agricultural past.
The stoneware cup has small “stones” of lighter sandstone. Miguel Neto went back in time to make these stones, to a technique dating back to Neolithic times that has been in existence for over seven thousand years, using wooden moulds to get the shape and texture he wanted. The cup was made on a potter’s wheel.
