Quartz-studded pottery of Nisa

The Nisa museum is careful about origins. Stone-set pottery is an old tradition closely tied to keeping water, but no concrete study fixes its origin in time or place. It coexisted with similar practices in Estremoz, 84 km away, which has an inlay technique with somewhat different features, and in the neighbouring Spanish Alta Extremadura, where the same decoration is called enchinado, notably at Ceclavín. Besides Nisa itself, ware was once made at Amieira do Tejo (mostly large storage jars and roof tiles), Montalvão (also jars) and Cacheiro, where the last resident potter retired in the 1980s.

From the 1960s demand turned more decorative than practical, largely because Nisa was then an obligatory stop for coach travellers between Lisbon and the Beira Interior. Potters, who had sold their vessels in the railway stations of the Beira Baixa line, started making plates, platters, miniatures, ashtrays and small animal replicas, and traditional shapes took on a distinctive stone decoration in a single line, using smaller stones. This is called the modern type. The older, traditional type uses coarse stone in two lines, and the village of Cacheiro had its own peculiar stone pattern and tone.