Outdoor kiln yard

Porches, in Lagoa, was chosen in 1968 for a revival of Algarve pottery by the Irish artist Patrick Swift and the Portuguese artist Lima de Freitas. The Wikipedia article on the workshop says that in the early 1960s Swift found craft production little changed since the Middle Ages, and later wrote that the basic dishes were of local Lagoa pottery, "easily breakable and poorly glazed". His 1965 book on the Algarve documented the decline in quality. They picked Porches for its long history as a pottery centre and its clay pits.

Kilns were the first problem. Swift built a wood-burning kiln and the first results were unsuccessful, so the founders asked Lisbon ceramists for advice and acquired a more efficient kiln. The first workshop was a small 17th-century farmhouse, now a ceramics workshop. A larger building designed by Swift later went up on the western edge of Porches, on the EN125. The workshop makes majolica, a tin-glazed earthenware, painted freehand on the tin glaze in a traditional technique, with animals, flowers and foliage drawn from the designs of earlier civilisations that had dominated the Algarve.