Arts and Crafts
Loulé has been, since the Middle Ages, a land of artisans and craftsmen, and it has already been mentioned in the medieval village of Loulé in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the existence of shoemakers, carpenters, masons, locksmiths, butchers, granaries, albardeiros, potters, watchmakers, confectioners, tanners, dyers and weavers of Soria.
The importance of Arts and Crafts in the economic life of the city and municipality of Loulé
In the middle of the century. In the city and its surroundings, the production of seiras and doormats for the contract would be significant in the city and its surroundings, which also included packaging for dried fruits, the weaving of linens, wool cloths for clothing and bags.
The scenario will not have changed much and despite the obstacles it has faced over the centuries, from demographic crises to development peaks, Loulé has maintained the identifying matrix of its social and economic base.
Loulé is among the municipalities in the Algarve that, until the end of the twentieth century, had the greatest diversity of arts and crafts, as a result of its extensive territorial area and, above all, its great landscape, demographic and economic heterogeneity. It gained fame and was for a long time known as: “land of handicrafts”.
More recently and until the second half of the twentieth century (seventies), the economic and social dynamics of the town of Loulé overlapped in some activities with its Algarve counterparts, namely with regard to the small artisanal industry of footwear and leather, dried fruits, palm and esparto basketry, tailoring and sewing, of copper and other areas of artisanal production and respective trade. The village was a pole of attraction for sellers and buyers from other locations in the Algarve region, the country and the Andalusia region.
The abundant supply of goods, the ease of access to commerce and the attractive prices made Loulé stand out in the competition with towns and cities, especially those closer to home (Faro, Tavira, Albufeira).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, there were spinning factories, jute and linen fabrics, tanneries, as well as the metallurgical industry (blacksmiths, boilermakers and tinkers) and the ceramics industry, dispersed in the busiest streets of the town. In the first decades of the twentieth century, there were also three factories for the treatment and manufacture of cork materials, two soap factories, a wax factory, and a pyrotechnic factory. In the food area, mills for the manufacture of flour, the production of dairy products, confectionery based on figs and almonds, some olive oil mills and also the manufacture of wine and brandies (with factories located on the limits of the old village) predominated.
In the area of specialized trade, fabric stores, hat shops and saddle shops, tobacconists, taverns, cork, palm and esparto shops, drugstores, barbershops, wood, jewellery shops and watchmaking shops predominated.
Other spaces of intense commercial dynamics were the fairs and markets, especially the latter, which developed in different spaces of the village, with the municipal market inaugurated in 1908, functioning as a space of convergence of these markets that were previously scattered in the squares and squares of the village.