At Lisbon Design Week, Designers From All Over Grappled With Portuguese Design’s Identity

This story is part of Fair Take, our reporting on global design events that looks up close at the newest ideas in fixtures, furnishings, and more.

At the end of May, when I walked into Lisbon’s Palacete Gomes Freire—a 19th-century palace painted a pastel but punchy shade of yellow—the first thing that my eyes fell on were five wall sculptures made of what appeared to be straw. They hung above the landing of a grand split staircase, an organic, earthy rebuttal to a space that represented the architectural opulence of another era. I’d soon learn that these sculptures are made of bulrush, a tall grass that’s native to Portugal. A chair sitting to the left of the sculptures features a back made of the same material, spun into a nautilus-like swirl, but paired with a clean-lined galvanized iron frame and seat. Though the wall sculptures first attracted my attention, the Cadeira chair is where my eyes rested, called to the pairing of these contrasting materials.

The pieces are by Macheia, a studio led by Lucrezia Papillo and Iany Gayo, who are following in the craft traditions of the country they both now call home, but with a contemporary lens. (Papillo is Italian-German, and Gayo is from Mozambique, but is part Portuguese.) The designers worked with local artisans Manuel Ferreira and Paulo Sousa on the sculptures and Cadeira chair, specifically using the Portuguese bunho technique that’s historically been used for basketry. With these pieces they want to bring the technique to a new context and audience without watering down the organic beauty that’s inherent to the traditional craft.

The chair and sculptures are just one example of the direction the country’s design scene seems to be headed in. While its identity has long been wrapped up in centuries-old craft traditions like tilework and embroidery, at Lisbon By Design, and Lisbon Design Week, which runs concurrently with a total of 80 exhibitions featuring work by over 150 makers across 11 neighborhoods, it seemed that the country’s designers—whether native-born or immigrant—were grappling with how exactly to create a new era for the Portugal design scene without abandoning the country’s rich design history.

Part of this friction is owed to the fact that Portugal has undergone a lot of change in the past 10 years. Recent tourism numbers have set records for the country and immigrants, many of whom have come to Portugal from other parts of Europe because of its favorable taxes, now make up 15 percent of its population. At the design week’s opening press conference, Belgian-born founder Michèle Fajtmann shared that about 30 to 40 percent of the designers showcased during the week are not Portuguese; in the many exhibitions I saw, I met a number of designers who recently moved there. Several people told me they were drawn to living in Portugal specifically because of its craft history and the sense that there were more expert artisans to collaborate with here than in other European countries.

Whether newcomer or native-born, designers in Lisbon surfaced craft traditions in innovative ways. One such was local designer Catarina Tudella, founder of Sede Companhia, who showed work in a group show of emerging designers in a backhouse behind the Lisbon By Design palacete. Tudella abandoned her career as an engineer in 2019 to turn her focus on embroidery. She utilizes the Castelo Branco technique, which employs silk thread on a linen backing, originating in 17th-and 18th-century bedspreads typically made for brides. While she doesn’t work within this particular context—the piece on display is a panel that could function like a room divider—she is as faithful as possible to the original method. Tudella told me that returning to this craft tradition makes her feel grounded in her culture at a time when it’s easy to feel unmoored by social media.

The importance of the country’s craft tradition was underscored by the main exhibition of Lisbon Design Week, titled Feito à Mão, which translates to handmade. Curators André Matos, Astrid Suzano, and Vasco Águas commissioned 14 Portugal–based designers to create a vase by hand in a material of their choosing. In most cases they weren’t aware of exactly what they’d be showing come time for the exhibition, putting an enormous amount of trust in the designers they chose for the show. The resulting assortment is varied, including pieces made from glass, brass, copper, cork, and willow, among other materials. The presentation underscores the expertise that lives in the hands of the designers working in the country.

The question of "what is Portuguese design" needn’t stick too faithfully to craft history, though. There was one exhibition that stuck out for its representation of a different part of Portuguese materiality. Held in the office of local architecture firm Studio Gameiro, a show of copper furniture by designer Nick Valentijn made in collaboration with architect João Gameiro drew attention to the country’s copper mines both with the pieces themselves and with an accompanying video that played near the work. Presented in partnership with St Vincents gallery of Antwerp, the collection of furniture which included a chair, an ottoman, and two light fixtures is blocky in a cartoonish way. It feels like a representation of the otherworldliness of the mines, if not the treacherousness of working in them. Even Swiss manufacturer USM added its two cents to the Portuguese design conversation, presenting a new collection of furniture by Armando Cabral—who was raised in Portugal, though now lives in New York—at Lisbon design shop Paris Sete. The collection expands on a collaboration with Cabral that launched in 2025, though this time the cushions are upholstered with fabric loomed by Portuguese heritage textile company Fabricaal.

Though the overwhelming majority of work was by active designers, Portuguese design history was on display in fleeting moments, too. Atelier Daciano Dacosta had a presentation both in Lisbon By Design and at their studio, which was open to the public for the duration of design week. At both locations, attendees could familiarize themselves with the breadth of the designer’s work—which included rugs, seating, and other furnishings, often made for hospitality projects. Dacosta was the first Portuguese designer added to Vitra Design Museum’s collection, when his Alvor (1967) and Quadratura (1971) chairs were purchased in 2022. A common refrain is that Portugal has no design tradition, only a craft tradition—a supposition that unnecessarily diminishes the latter. But the presence of Dacosta’s work was a stake in the ground that today’s Portuguese designers are a part of a deeper lineage that includes both industrial design and craft expertise.

At a show titled A Longo Adeus, held in French artist and ceramicist Victoire de Lencquesaing’s home, collector João Cabaço drew further attention to Portugal’s design history. Alongside work by contemporary designers, the collector displayed a selection of furnishings that were either designed or produced by Portuguese people. Using old furniture books and magazines as his guide, then hunting for pieces he spots in them, Cabaço has been assembling his collection for the past five years and intends to publish a book featuring the chairs of his collection. Those on display at A Longo Adeus include an Ikea lounger that was produced in Portugal and flatpack kids’ furniture produced by Molaflex in the 1970s. Cabaço has opened a vintage furniture shop that sells pieces outside the scope of this collection in order to fund the Portuguese collection, which now includes 600 pieces.

Portuguese-born or just passing through, working with traditional techniques or interrogating the country’s history in some other fashion, it’s clear that the question of what it means to be a designer in Portugal today is still an open one. But in conversation after conversation, I heard from designers that Lisbon Design Week offers them an opportunity to experiment and space to do so without the steep financial burden posed by fairs like Milan Design Week. Even if everyone has a different perspective on the meaning of Portuguese design today, the country’s craft traditions are providing ample kindling for a whole new generation of designers.

Top photo by André Matos

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