Spanish (Galician) Sargadelos Figural Porcelain Sculpture. Titled "Tribute to Castro." Inscribed "Sargadelos, E.F." on base. Late 20th Century. Hand painted glazed porcelain depicting a female figure with numerous stacked wares on her head. 

Size: 5 x 2 x 10 in. 

In 1806 Antonio Raimundo Ibáñez, the Marquis of the Galician town of Sargadelos, Spain, commissioned the construction of a porcelain factory high in the hills overlooking the juncture of the Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Biscay. Having already enticed maritime trade routes and an iron ore excavation company to the area to take advantage of the massive kaolin clay deposits in the hills, he and his son José spent the next thirty years building several workshops and 25 furnaces, making them a favorite stop for ships bound north for Britain and France and south to Africa. The Ibáñez Y Tapia Company was formed in 1835 with Frenchman Marcel Richard taking over operations, branching out from simple mono-color white ceramics into polychrome and hand-painted chinaware. In 1845 Luis de la Riva y Cía took control of the company, placing it under the direction of an Englishman named Edwin Forester, who brought over 1,000 families from around Europe to work in newly constructed factories. In 1873, the Ibáñez family retook management of the company by force during the chaos of the First Spanish Republic, but their efforts to deport all the expert foreign potters and their families led to lawsuits and riots which resulted in the closure of facilities two years later, along with an economic blight that affected the Lugo region for nearly a century. In 1949 Isaac Díaz Pardo opened a ceramic workshop in the factory ruins, attracting other artists and eventually forming the industrial complex of Cerámica do Castro. Reigniting the porcelain industry of the area, he worked to find original designs in the city archives and developed a new, fine translucent paste that increased durability and shine. In 1968 he led a cadre of exiled Galician intellectuals from Argentina back to Sargadelos who helped rebuild the factory into its modern state with two production plants and 150 employees. In 2014 the company declared bankruptcy, but local artisans continue to produce pieces in home studios in the area, which is still rich with the high-quality kaolin clay despite over two centuries of excavation.

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