Portugal — a home by choice

There are countries you visit, and others you recognize—as if you had known them before you arrived. Portugal did that to me. I call it my home by choice, and that is not a figure of speech: it is where I first saw that craft could be an ordinary way of life, rather than an attraction for tourists.

Portugal has been making things slowly for a very long time. Cork is harvested from the same oaks as it was a generation ago—the tree must be left undisturbed for nine years between harvests, so haste has no place there. Woollen textiles from mountain workshops are made with knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Ceramics have a weight and irregularity through which you can recognize the hand. This is a country where “handmade” is not a marketing label but a statement of fact.

There is something else in these objects that I understood only with time: they bring calm not through colour or form, but through their honesty. You know what they are made from. You know where they come from. You know that in ten years they will look better, not worse—because cork, wool and good ceramics age like people we like: they gain character.

This autumn, the first Portuguese objects will arrive in Poland by my route—the short one I have written about from the beginning: from workshop to home, with a single link in between. Before that happens, I am going back once more—to visit the workshops, shake hands and see how the things I will recommend under my own name are made.

And you—do you have a country that feels like your home by choice?