Vestiges of Memory: Portuguese Azulejos Now in Bohol

Vestiges of Memory: Portuguese Azulejos Now in Bohol

In August of 1979, I stepped away from graduate studies at Ohio State and set off on a backpacking trip across Europe. With a Europass in hand, I traveled solo to the UK then by train from London to Athens, where a chance encounter at the port changed the course of that journey and my life. There I met Sofia, a young Portuguese traveler bound for Mykonos. We became fast friends, and over three weeks of shared adventures she planted the seed: “Go to Portugal. Meet my family. See what you might do there.” (Sofia was working as an au pair in London, but advised me to visit her parents, which I did, and who graciously took me in for several months.)

By December of that same year I had left graduate school and the USA behind, carrying with me my experience teaching Russian and a desire to live and work abroad. England was my first stop, but by early 1980 Portugal became my home for the next two and a half years. I rooted in 'Lisboa' and started tutoring English, while I also traveled the country, learning the language and culture, absorbing the country's rhythms, its history and traditions.

It was during a visit to Coimbra, the country's capital until the 13th century and a cultural hub, that I found the blue-and-white tile among the photos below. In an amazing circumstance of luck, while I was staying in a rustic inn near an old building demolition site, I spotted a fragment of history among the rubble: a broken tile with its orange tree motif still vivid despite cracks and chips. This was no simple decoration — it was an antique azulejo, and from what I learned from an expert, likely from the mid 18th century. It might have once been part of a grand wall panel. Salvaging it felt like rescuing a piece of Coimbra's architectural soul.

Some time later, in a shop in Lisbon that promised vintage and antique wares, I acquired the floral tiles shared in this post. From the nature of the colour palette and the brushwork, these were probably hand‑painted in the late 18th to early 19th century, rustic and imperfect, yet alive with tradition. Their designs carry forward centuries of Portuguese ceramic artistry, classic objects that embody continuity with designs refined over time.

Together, this small set of tiles tells a layered story. The Coimbra fragment speaks of endurance, survival, and the persistence of beauty through ruin. The floral tiles -- including two that I have added to the cornerstone of a bamboo shed recently built on my property -- illustrate growth, natural development, and the artisans’ ongoing dialogue with heritage. Side by side, they remind us that legacy is not only preserved in intact monuments but also in fragments and reinterpretations. My own journey — from Ohio to Athens, from Sofia’s invitation to Portugal, from rubble to rescued tile, and now around the world to 40 years in Asia — mirrors the same themes: creative initiation, continuity, and stories carried forward.

In Bohol, these azulejos rest far from their Portuguese origins, yet they remain vessels of heritage and memory. They are bridges across time and place, reminders that even fragments of embossed blossoms and fruit can speak of legacy, resilience, and the enduring beauty of cultural tradition.

 

The Parrot Pot -- In Flight Across Time

 

The Parrot Pot -- In Flight Across Time

This Colima parrot vessel was made nearly two thousand years ago in western Mexico, part of the Shaft Tomb tradition (c. 100 BCE–250 CE). These sculptural tripod jars were often placed in deep shaft funerary chambers, accompanying the dead into the afterlife. I once saw one just like this in the Los Angeles County Museum.

I’ve read that parrots in Mesoamerica symbolized vitality, sunlight, communication, and the lushness of the tropics — fitting guardians for a journey beyond the physical world.

This vessel was not thrown on a wheel; the potter’s wheel was unknown in ancient West Mexico. Instead, it was shaped entirely by hand all those millenia ago by a Colima artisan working within the Shaft Tomb tradition. Clay gathered from local riverbeds would have been tempered with sand or crushed volcanic grit to strengthen it. The rounded body was built up slowly through coiling and modeling, each layer pressed and blended into the next, the form rising not from rotation but from touch. Even now, with its balanced weight and quiet symmetry, we can feel the intelligence of hands that shaped this clay.

I’ve also learned that the three parrot heads and solid tripod legs were sculpted separately and attached while the clay was still leather-hard, the joins smoothed so that structure and sculpture became one.

Once assembled, the surface was carefully burnished with a polished stone, compressing the clay to create its soft sheen. A red wash — made from iron-rich minerals — was then applied to give the vessel its deep reddish earthen color. It was then fired not in a kiln with gauges and controls, but in an open-air or pit firing fueled by wood, where temperature was judged by flame, smoke, and long experience. The mottling and tonal shifts across the surface are part of that process, the trace of fire itself.

Of course, noone knows the name of the person who made this pot. Colima artisans remain anonymous, their identities folded into time. But this was no casual maker. The confident modeling, the stability of the tripod stance, and the assured sculpting of the bird form suggest someone who was deeply practiced, working within a family workshop, passing knowledge across generations.

The pot began as earth gathered by hand, was shaped by skill and memory, and was fired by flame. That it still stands — and has crossed continents — is a testament to the culture that created it and to the unnamed hands that first gave it form.

I bought this piece in 1993 from a certified pre-Columbian antiquities dealer in Tucson who was the friend of a friend. It had come from a substantial private collection of Colima material assembled decades earlier. At the time, I justified buying it because of its story, its beauty and my thought that it would be an investment. I also wanted it to join the collection of Indigenous artifacts I'd inherited and collected — objects that felt alive with continuity and presence.

I did not yet realize I was beginning a shared migration.

From Tucson it traveled to my home in rural Akita prefecture, Japan, where it became a fixture — and a conversation starter — for more than a decade. Its rounded, ribbed body and grounded stance seemed to anchor the room, even as snow fell outside for months each year.

It was then crated and shipped to Kuala Lumpur, and later to Singapore, where it lived with me in four different residences. In our last apartment there, beside the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, we would watch flocks of parrots every early evening as they swept across the sky and settled into the rain trees. The ancient bird-form vessel sat quietly indoors, while its living counterparts crossed the twilight in formation — a reminder that motion and continuity are part of the same story.

On my first trip from Singapore to Bohol, I hand-carried the pot on the flight via Manila, just to make sure it would be safe. After decades of careful packing and shipping across continents, it made its most recent journey not in a crate but under my direct care.

Created as a ceremonial object for a shaft tomb nearly two thousand years ago, this vessel has already traveled across time. Its own modern migration — from Mexico to Arizona, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and now the Philippines — feels strangely appropriate. Like a small flock of parrots in flight, it has moved through geographies while retaining its essential form.

Originally acquired as an artifact, it has become something more personal. I now intend to keep it in the family, eventually as the repository for a bit of my own earthly remains — a quiet echo of its first purpose. In that sense, its long journey may come full circle.

An object made to accompany the dead has instead accompanied the living — across oceans, climates, and chapters of life — before returning, once again, to its ancient role.