STARTING LIMBO

On beginnings, setbacks, and a decision we hadn't quite told anyone about yet.

We grew up in the interior of Portugal, in families where life happened around the table. Our grandparents were farmers. Food was never just food — it was the rhythm of the whole year, the reason to gather, the thing that held everything together. We didn't fully understand what that world had given us until we left.


We left early. Architecture took us across cities and oceans. Each place taught us something new about making and seeing. But it was only by leaving that we understood where we had come from, and what we wanted to make.


Objects for the table. Things built to last, made with intention, meant to belong. The idea had been with us for a while. In early 2025, we decided to actually do something about it. We didn't tell anyone straight away. We needed to believe it ourselves first.

For months it still felt a little surreal, somewhere between intention and reality, until the kiln arrived. We knew the interior dimensions. We had not thought enough about the exterior. It barely fit through the gate. Six people, wooden boards across waterlogged ground, and a lot of reassurances to the delivery man later, it made it. We were covered in mud. That felt like the real beginning.


We both build the pieces, we both obsess over the details. Inês tends toward illustration and visual language. João leans toward strategy and logistics. We don't argue, but we defend our ideas with perhaps more conviction than is strictly necessary. Everything is a negotiation. We've learned that's where the best things come from. Which is lucky, because not everything goes as planned. Halfway through painting one collection, we realised we had each been using a different blue. In one of our first firings, four serving platters came out completely deformed. Weeks of work. We stood there looking at them for a long time. Inês went quiet. João immediately started thinking about how to fix it. Inês, eventually, followed.

Everything has setbacks. Most of them will make you laugh eventually. The trick is getting to eventually.


We have more doubts than certainties. More ideas than time. But we are stubborn — genuinely, almost unreasonably stubborn — and we work hard, and somehow that has always been enough.


We call it Limbo. Curious by nature, grounded by craft.