The olive oil pedlar

Figurine in polychrome baked clay, depicting an olive oil pedlar, next to a donkey or a mule, who carries four olive oil ewers on its back.

The "Estremoz clay figurines" are a kind of traditional pottery named after the city in the South of Portugal where it developed, from the 18th century onwards.

By the 1920s this tradition was on the verge of disappearing and it was recovered by José Sá Lemos, the director of the local Industrial School, with the help of Ana das Peles, the sole practitioner of the tradition remaining by then. Although she was already old at that time, Ana das Peles was responsible for training the new practitioners, namely Mariano da Conceição, one of the co-authors of this item.

In the recovery process, the tradition was also reinvented, and this period marks the design and making of new types of clay figures, such as the Christmas cribs inspired by the "thrones" of St. Anthony and the "cascades" of St. João, used respectively in Lisbon and Porto.

The "Estremoz clay figurines" was one of the traditional handicrafts selected by the Bureau for National Propaganda (Secretariado de propaganda Nacional) for display at the international folk-art exhibitions organized in the 1930s with objects made by Mariano da Conceição, as it is the case with this "Olive Oil Pedlar", later accessed in the collection of the Popular Art Museum (PAM). His wife, Liberdade da Conceição, also worked in 1940 in the Pavilion of Arts and Crafts of the Exhibition of the Portuguese World and a number of the clay figurines she painted live in that pavilion were later integrated into the Museum collection.

The Craftsmanship of the Estremoz clay figures have since 2015 belonged to the Portuguese National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage and. In 2017 they were incorporated into UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.