Luigi Micheletti Award
The number 18 furnace of the Sacavém Ceramics Factory remains as a unique and priceless piece of the heritage of the old faience factory created in 1856 by Manuel Joaquim Afonso.
The decision to build a Museum around this twelve-metre furnace, built with the labour and knowledge of the Sacavém factory workers, to honour all the men and women who worked there was made by unanimous deliberation of the municipal council.
Officially inaugurated on 7 July 2000 by the President of the Portuguese Republic, Jorge Sampaio, the Sacavém Ceramics Museum is located in a recent development called Real Forte.
The sober lines of the building and its open indoor spaces are meant to recall life at the factory, where men and women worked at a pace marked by machines and repeated gestures.
On the façade of the building, the bas-relief titled “A enforna” (created by Armando Mesquita in 1946) illustrates what was once the largest faience factory in Portugal and on the Iberian Peninsula, lending its character to the collections of this Museum of social history and industry.
With exhibition rooms on two floors, collection storage rooms open to visitors, workshops and a documentation centre named after its founder, Manuel Joaquim Afonso, the Sacavém Ceramics Museum also possesses an auditorium and a museum shop. In the near future a cyber cafe will also be included within the Museum coffee-shop.
Concerned with the specific needs of a wide variety of different publics, the Museum provides audiotapes, Braille catalogues and specific orientation for visually impaired visitors.
The Micheletti Award strengthens the importance of the Museum and turned it into an object of academic interest.
The impact of the Luigi Micheletti Award
The Micheletti Award given to the Sacavém Ceramics Museum, for its quality and 19th century industrial patrimony preservation, was received with pride by the Sacavém community. It has reinforced their self-esteem by turning public their industrial collective memory. Since then, the Museum became a museological reference, due to its exhibitions politics, which are pioneer in Portugal.
The Museum collections became known abroad. As a consequence, we have received an invitation for an exhibition in New Jersey, with international impact, concerning the 18 most important Portuguese ceramics factories.
