FABRICAAL: THE MODERN CUSTODIANS

Despite industrialisation and the advent of mass production, some ventures have endured, preserving and revitalising the Alentejo’s traditional crafts. One of the most notable of these is Fábrica Alentejana de Lanifícios, founded in the 1930s, in Reguengos de Monsaraz, as the result of a twenty-year process of bringing together local craftspeople who had previously worked in isolation, and organising their labour and endeavours more rationally.

A factory where everything is woven exclusively by hand, using locally sourced raw materials, Fabricaal has asserted itself as the custodian of a culture, ensuring that the skills, techniques, craft and expertise of generations are not lost.

This is history, a direct link between the hands which made the mantas and the hands which will use them. In treasuring objects like the manta alentejana we recognise that the fabric of civilisation has always been woven from the silent and enduring presence of things that sustain, protect and connect us. And in honouring these mantas, Fabricaal honours the hands of Fátima, Carmen, Marília, Sofia, Maria José, Vanessa, Sandra, Eileen, Filipa, António, Luís and Margarida, and all the other generations of hands which created them, in a silence imbued with peace and wisdom.