LÁPIS AZUL

A capsule collection that celebrates democracy. 6 vases, 3 models, and the poetic justice of a blue pencil - once used to censor, now writing freedom. Inspired by Portugal's 25th of April, 1974.

In Portugal's 20th-century dictatorship, state censors used a blue pencil to strike through any text, image or drawing that didn't align with the regime. Active for over four decades, it wasn't just a bureaucratic tool. It was a machine of erasure. Poets, novelists, musicians: almost every major name in Portuguese culture knew the blue pencil. And over time, its greatest triumph wasn't the cuts it made. It was the self-censorship it installed in people's minds. That pencil became a symbol of everything that couldn't be said.


On the 25th of April, 1974, it all changed.

To celebrate 52 years of that revolution, we made 6 hand-built vases decorated with that same blue - now carrying words of freedom instead. Three songs that meant everything: Liberdade (Sérgio Godinho), Grândola, Vila Morena (Zeca Afonso), and Somos Livres (Ermelinda Duarte).

Grândola, Vila Morena was one of the radio signals of the Revolution, broadcast in the early hours of April 25th to tell the troops to move. Liberdade by Sérgio Godinho, written in the heat of 1974, is a manifesto: freedom only truly exists when there is peace, bread, housing, health, education. And Somos Livres by Ermelinda Duarte, the most lyrical of the three, with its seagulls and red poppies, the voice of a people that spent decades whispering, finally allowed to speak out loud.

From the blue pencil that silenced, to blue words of freedom written on clay. From the carnations placed in rifle barrels, to the vases made to hold them. Six hand-built vases, two of each model, each individually numbered, each accompanied by an illustrated postcard and a miniature jar pin, both made by us. Viva o 25 de Abril!
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