name, but not by natur

CERAMICIST AND JEWELLERY DESIGNER BERNADETTE MARTINS IS ONE OF THE HUGELY TALENTED, MULTI-DISCIPLINE RESIDENT ARTISTS OF LOUL É DESIGN LAB AT LOULÉ CRIATIVO IN P Á LACIO GAMA LOBO, WHERE SHE ALSO RUNS CLASSES IN TILE PAINTING TECHNIQUES

Words: SALLY DIXON

FRENCH-BORN Bernadette Martins was a creative child but fully admits she doesn’t come from a creative family, “I’m the crazy girl!”, she says. When it was time for her to choose a study path at age 18, she decided to channel her passion into fashion design. This would be her first experience of Portugal, studying at IADE in Lisbon, one of the best design schools in Europe. A couple of years after completing her degree, she became a costume designer for film and television. Working on French productions filming in Portugal she recalls: “It was very exciting, maybe too exciting! For every production you must change the location and the set-up of the film. It was very fast-paced and the hours were long.” Six years of excitement proved too much for Bernadette, who realised it wasn’t something she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

From cinema sets to ceramics

In the background of her film career, Bernadette never stopped expressing her artistic side, drawing and painting when she could. A break from the franticness and friction of the movie industry led her to the Algarve 18 years ago, and a search for artistic courses. In Loulé she found a one-year programme in tile painting that would lead to a new love and a lifelong profession.

Tile painting introduced her to the world of ceramics and the desire to work with clay and sculpture. Having become a mother, she didn’t have the time to study a professional ceramic course fullon and so decided to learn through self-teaching; no mean feat given the enormity of the ceramic world and the breadth of techniques it encompasses.

Bernadette was particularly drawn to the ancestral techniques of ceramics, finished without the use of a kiln, like pit firing. You guessed it, it’s literally a dug-out pit with fire in it (and other organic materials), a system dating back some 30,000 years, when pots were first made this way. No pot leaves the pit the same and so the opportunity for unique and unexpected results abounds. It’s a laborious and potentially dangerous process, Bernadette says. “Sometimes I work solo in this ancient method but it’s not easy, it’s better if you work in a group with three or four people.”

The Japanese technique Raku proved to be another favourite for Bernadette, again working directly with fire to create a unique glaze finish. Ceramic works are taken from the kiln when red hot and placed in material that easily catches fire, such as newspaper, in order to starve the ceramic of oxygen. Sounds like an equally risky business!

During the pandemic, Bernadette worked with a totally new technique, that of enamel on copper. She says: “It was a revelation of colours and possibilities for me. As a ceramicist, the glazing process is always time consuming, unlike the glaze on metals. Time flies, and the results are like a firework. It’s completely addictive!”

For Bernadette, pottery combines her two passions of illustration and sculpture with inspiration coming from nature, the coral of the ocean, the earth, botanical and organic forms. Her most recent work is a tribute to the underwater world of the oceans, filled with unique treasures, where the details of corals come to life in a subtle delicacy of shapes and textures.

A move into jewellery

Bernadette now has a new creative focus. In 2019 she took a specialist workshop with Filomeno Pereira de Sousa, a master of contemporary jewellery. She says: “The fascination for jewellery brought the discovery and learning of new materials and techniques, where I can once again let my imagination run wild.”

Throughout the development of her ceramic work, Bernadette fell in love with porcelain and the minutiose nature of working with it. The delicate, intricate details intrigued her, and she wanted to find a way to give it a special place in her work and transform the pieces into jewellery.

“When I work with ceramics it’s for use in the house, for food, for home decoration, but I like the fact that jewellery is more personal, it’s more intimate and you carry it with you,” she says.

It proved difficult to find someone to make her vison come to life and so of course she decided to learn how to do it herself.

“When I begin something, I’m very curious; for me it’s exciting. The techniques, the research, the material – I love learning new ways of working,” she says. “In ceramics, I studied many different techniques, but the material is always ceramic. What I find fascinating about jewellery is that you can use whatever materials you like – ceramics, wood, different types of metal, wax, semi-precious stones, acrylic, it’s crazy!”

And so, setting her own challenges for seeking out new ways of working and new mediums, Frágil jewellery was born. Look up the dictionary definition of the word ‘fragile’ and you’ll be met with some unfavourable terms – weak, feeble, defenceless. For Bernadette, it’s a different story: “For me, fragile is strength, it is something beautiful, delicate and special,” she says. Whether it’s ceramic, sculpture, tiles or jewellery, Bernadette’s enthusiasm for her work is abundantly apparent. The joy she derives from her creativity is inspiring. She’s the first one to admit that she prefers to have artistic freedom to do what she wants.

She was recently commissioned by a gallery in Porto for an exhibition on the theme of literature, to create an interpretation of a story in three pieces of jewellery based on a surrealistic book by French writer, Boris Vian. Check out the results on her Instagram page @fragil_jewellery.

Bernadette works closely with clients to order, especially when it comes to her traditional tile painting and ceramics, but her most quirky project right now is working on a dinosaur mascot for the UNESCO Geopark Algarvensis project that spans Loulé, Silves and Albufeira. Guaranteed to be an eyecatching and joyful piece!