Meet the Specialists

It’s hard not to be seduced by the beauty, scent and sounds in the tea shop in São Bento, transporting you back to a time where it was improper for ladies to show their ankles in public. Confused? Well, this may only have been a tea shop for seven years, but it’s housed in an old shoe store from 1880, with all the original furnishings intact and restored. The perfectly aligned shoe shelves are now inhabited by large cans of tea and the former fitting room, where the female customers could try on new shoes in private, is still residing behind the counter. At Companhia Portugueza do Chá you will find all the tea that your heart desires, from green, fermented, black and white to everything in between.

Formerly residing in a store on the same street, when the previous owner of the old shoe shop turned convenience store offered Companhia Portugueza do Chá to take over the premises and restore it to its former glory, they did not hesitate a second. Brainchild of owner and tea sommelier Sebastián Filgueiras, the shop carries not only a variety of teas blended in store by him — like Earl Grey with Portuguese grown bergamot — but also teas from origin and rare specialities. Recently the company managed to get a couple of kilos from a wild tea three in China, which is more than 1,300 years old. “Only two families can take care of it and pick the leaves, meaning you have to be on a list to buy from the tree. It’s a wonderfully fragrant, yet expensive tea,” store manager José Isaac Barros says, and explains how tea has the same taste notes as wine.

You will find many quality varieties in the specialist store, including some co-created with Portuguese cultural personalities and in collaborations with the city’s art museums. In addition, many teas from origin, like Darjeeling’s Assam and Japanese teas, which are sourced directly. This is a world of tea, where you can let yourself be guided safely to the flavours of your choice. The shop source their teas from all over the world and a great amount from small producers — yet what might be surprising to some, also from Portugal, which is one of only three tea producing countries in Europe. The tea company buys a lot from a plantation on the Azorean island of San Miguel, the oldest in Europe at 120 years.

Portugal has a long history with tea, from the explorations that led them to Asia, to introducing tea as a social beverage to Britain, when trendsetting Catherine of Braganza of Portugal married Charles II in 1662 and she thus brought tea to the English royals. While tea has had to give way to heaps of coffee, which today posses more of a social place in the Portuguese drinking habits, the owners of the Companhia Portugueza do Chá see tea making a comeback, especially among the younger generations. But as they say, it’s not a competition. “We like to think that we contribute to giving tea a comeback,” Barros says, and adds: “Lisbon used to have some very old tea shops, where they only sold tea, but they all closed in the 1950s and 1960s, and some that sold both closed about ten to twenty years ago.” Let’s hope for a comeback.

companhiaportuguezadocha.com

For more than 200 years candles have been made in the building in Rua Loreto, rented by the same family since opening in 1789 (on the same day as the start of the French Revolution!). Now one of the oldest shops in Lisbon, the use of the product might have shifted, from a necessity in streets and homes to a delightful, cosy or traditional addition, but the product itself hasn’t really. Caza das Vellas Loreto have expanded the now more than 2,000 different moulds they use to make candles, but they still use beeswax and cotton wicks as they always have. Every candle is handmade and therefore unique, and the designs change with the seasons, from fruits and Portuguese mushrooms in autumn to fish in summer — and of course candles for Christmas and Easter time.

Times may be changing, but here above the wooden counter and flame shaped cabinets, the old clock is still ticking through fluctuations in trends and technology. Even though classified as Portuguese Cultural Heritage, Caza das Vellas Loreto have had to strike a balance between tradition and modernity. A Portuguese custom is to buy a candle for a child’s christening, bringing it home afterwards. In the workshop in the same building as the shop, candles like this are still being produced, also for other various commemorative days. And the handicraft is undeniably intricate, from hand coloured details to wax bows wrapped around the candles resembling silk. It’s also possible to have candles made to order, be it a special figure or to fit an old candle holder, which you hold dear.

“We wish to preserve the shop and our products for the next generations,” says Maria de Sá Pereira who owns the business with her husband. “And that’s why we need to take care of the old stores, because they take care of the things for us. And it’s hard in these times, our store used to be twice as big,” she explains. She remembers when the street was still full of beautiful old shops. These must have been lit up by the candles from the workshop: A large faux candle on the facade celebrates the time when the Portuguese queen gave them the license to supply candles for the lights in this street.

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In a world overflowing with selfies, it’s rare to see a professionally taken portrait, so much so, that it almost feels rebellious to get one. But there are still places where photographers specializes in the art, such as Fotografia Triunfo in Lisbon’s São Bento district. Since 1952 this photography shop has specialized in wide-ranging photography work and services in colour and black and white. Analogue photography has gone niche, but there is still a market for the know-how, and this is exactly where to find it.

In addition to these services Fotografia Triunfo also serves as a generational and data archive of complete portraits of the members of families in the neighbourhood, preserving the negatives for the future. The archives also contain portraits of public figures, such as actors, poets and politicians. Moreover the shop stores the archive of the previously closed Fotolusarte.

In 1950’s Lisbon it was customary to head to the photographer when a baby was born. 10 years on the parents would return for the child’s first ID card photo and then, around the tender age of 16 the kids would go back themselves to get photos taken that they could hand out to their sweethearts. On their wedding day the photographer would accompany the couple in documenting their big day, a service Fotografia Triunfo still provides. This was a time where photos were not overflowing our digital phones and data banks, but were rather framed, precious and few.

The owner, Adriano Filipe, began working in the shop at the age of 12 and later took it over from his master and founder, Américo Tomás da Silva. Films are no longer developed in the shop, but there is a great display of old cameras, utensils and other photography objects in the wooden cabinets. In the back of the shop there is a small studio with oil-painted backdrops and a small dressing room. An image from this shop carries the stamp of the house, a testament of quality, that many of the neighbours have in their homes.

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A visit in a tailor’s shop in Piccadilly in London in the early 20th century left such an impression on Augusto Brandão that it inspired him to open a tailor shop in Rua Augusta in 1911. At the time anything alluding to all things French or British was the height of fashion. In 1950 the current owners, the Quadros family, acquired the store and changed it slightly into a fabric shop. Remaining true to the British role model, the place looks pretty much the same now more than a 100 years after opening. The elegant dark hardwood furnishings and the English coats of arms at the back of the shop is still to be found beneath metres on metres of exclusive and specially sourced fabrics.
Through a century of Portuguese history, the store has opened its doors to customers looking for that specific fabric to either take to the tailor or the modiste (Bridgerton vibes all the way). Nowadays the customers shop mostly for special occasions like weddings or the likes. After women started working outside the home, not many people can sow anymore, and that’s just one of the many changes the shop have witnessed through the years:

“On 25th April, the day of the revolution, we opened the store and sold four meters of fabric before we got the notion that there was a revolution going on, and had to close,” current owner José Quadros shares, thinking back also of the big fire in Chiado in 1988, where they opened as usual but had to close and “get out of here”. Many famous clients have frequented Londres Salão over the years, one of them the great fado singer Amália Rodrigues, another the former first lady of Portugal, Gertrudes Tomás. In 1957, when Queen Elizabeth II came to Portugal, the windows were decorated with replicas of the English Crown Jewels. José Quadros has been here since 1986 — at the time there were more than 30 shops in Lisbon selling fabrics, now the store is one of only two remaining of its kind.

The store is an antidote to fast fashion, making its impact on sustainability. The great majority of the articles are made of natural fibres like wool and cotton — not polyester, polyamide or nylon. When fast fashion and the big brands came to Portugal in the end of the 1980s José Quadros realized they had to change their business model to secure it for the future, from cheap fabrics to high quality, and it worked: “What have made us stay in business, is firstly the quality and exclusivity of the fabrics, that you won’t find anywhere else in Portugal, secondly the personal service from our experienced team, who knows everything about fabrics,” Quadros explains.

When asked why he thinks it’s important to keep these kind of stores for the future, his answer is clear: “If some years from now an extraterrestrial arrived in downtown Lisbon or another European capital, it would not know where it was, if it only saw big international brands. That’s why I believe it’s very important to have a good mix of stores. Obviously we need the international brands, they are everywhere, but the real DNA of the city are the real genuine shops that have a lot of history and are part of the history of the city. We need this for locals and tourists alike.”

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Lisbon is blessed with many antiquarians and old book shops, places where you can find your favourite stories, sometimes even in beautifully bound books with gilded text embossed on the cover. But maybe it’s worn and torn, fragile or simply not good looking, and that’s where you need a new cover or casing for it. An artisan who still carefully restores the old gems is Carlos Guerreiro, who has been a bookbinder and guilder since 1972. He began his career working for the National Archives, and then later took over the old bookbinder shop in Rua de São Boaventura in 1981, including the tools and machines, and has been here ever since.

When asked why he chose this trade in the first place, the answer is simple: “It just happened, I love to read,” he says and pulls out two miniature bound books from above the doorway, with his own poetry written inside them. The title of the first one is ‘The Deaf Master — the book that teaches without talking’. But that’s not the only poetry he creates among these walls, closely covered in ornate metal tools and with stacks of naked books on the tables, the pages held together only by string. The grace he can instil in a worn-out book, creating of a personal case for it, or maybe making a menu for one of the city’s restaurants all adds to the fairytale. He also creates hand-painted marbled paper for the inside of the covers, and restores the pages if needed. No one else in Lisbon does both bookbinding and guilding anymore, and antique booksellers, renowned writers, designers, architects and chefs trust him with anything from the creation of new articles to old and rare books that may need restitching or rebinding.

Many have in fact found their way to his small workshop in the narrow streets of Barrio Alto, from national institutions, the attorney general, the courts and the presidency to private customers both national and international. But that is being modest; a closer look at the list of clients reveals nobilities such as the King of Greece, Prince Albert of Monaco and Queen Isabel II — meaning you can literally get treated like royalty here!

“I don’t have an apprentice, but I sometimes teach the trade in the city hall,” he shares before we leave, holding a 100-year-old book in his hands, and after a makeover by him, it probably has another 100 years of reading in it. Now that’s sustainable.

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Even if you are not in the market to have your wind or brass instrument tuned or fixed, you will surely appreciate the sound the performers get out of their instruments, when you hear what these guys can do to “horns” such as saxophones or flutes and the like. The musical instrument technicians Tomaz Miranda and Fábio Mendes are well hidden in a basement store in São Bento along with Tomaz’s brother, who manages the workshop. Here, hundreds of happy faces peek out from pictures of customers and friends between an array of antique instruments, diplomas and tools.

Tomaz Miranda comes from a long line of instrument makers and knows everything there is to know about maintaining and fixing wind and brass instruments — the group of musical instruments where sound is produced by the vibration of air, which the player blows into the instrument. The workshop has been here since 1994, after the first one in Rua do Carmo burned down in the big fire in Chiado in 1988. The tradition and values have been carried on from there and now also instilled in the younger generation represented by Tomaz’s “musical son” Fábio Mendes, and who will continue the workshop in the future.

“It’s no longer viable to make instruments by hand, but there is still much you can maintain and perfect the existing ones, hand- and factory-made alike. Most importantly, here in the workshop we make sure that each instrument — taking as much time as it needs — is adapted and individualized to the player, making it sound its absolute best,” Tomaz explains. Counting among its many amateur and professional customers the likes of the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, the Oporto National Orchestra, the small workshop is known all over the world and musicians from many countries bring their instruments here to be fixed and maintained, resulting in a long waitlist. But the clock is not important for Tomaz: “Each instrument has its time and we respect that,” he explains and continues: “Each human body is different, and each instrument is different. By making changes to the instrument to match the musician, it elevates the sound and makes the musician and instrument ‘one body’.”

With 40 years of experience, Tomaz has specialized in Spain, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, USA and Canada, and his philosophy is that to comprehend the present, you must understand the past. And he still has a thirst to learn new things: “If not, you just imitate,” he says and continues: “You can’t take short cuts, you have to be serious, and then beautiful things will come. An instrument is never lost.”

Tomaz doesn’t play himself, but he does make the instruments ‘sing', as he calls it, freeing them, and getting all the notes to be bright and beautiful with his understanding of the complicated instruments and their materials, like a doctor for musical instruments. He thinks it’s easier to make an old handmade instrument sound good, since the most natural, rounder notes come from older instruments, which do not suffer the same musical “disinfection” as modern, mechanically tempered instruments. Take a listen for yourself, next time you treat yourself to a night at the symphony or to some jazz tunes at one of Lisbon’s many clubs and venues.

tomasmirandaluthier.blogspot.com