São Pedro do Corval

São Pedro do Corval was called Aldeia do Mato until 1948, when a government decree changed the name at the population's wish. The historian Antónia Fialho Conde finds clay pieces tied to Christian worship there already in the 16th century: a visitation book of the diocese of Évora of 1534 ordered clay baptismal fonts in nearby chapels to be replaced with stone. Records mention potters only rarely before the 19th century. The 1890 industrial inquiry lists 38 potteries in the whole municipality, and an 1895 electoral list names eight potters among 188 names, the second most common occupation after landowners.

Numbers of workshops swung over the twentieth century. In 1905 there were 30 potteries, four making wine jars (talhas) and six for brandy. In 1950 there were fifteen, three of them making jars. During the 1980s, as makers bet on decoration against competition from plastic, 33 workshops were working, and around the turn of the millennium the count hovered near thirty. The study, published as part of a ceramics route south of the Tagus, counts 22 in operation but warns that master potters are scarce and apprentices nonexistent. The historian also quotes a view that the Alentejo had the conditions for a civilisation of clay.