Introducing the Albuquerque Foundation: ‘With a collection this special, it seemed almost perverse to keep it hidden’

In the account of his travels to China in the 13th century, the Venetian explorer Marco Polo described the porcelain he saw as being ‘of such beauty that nothing lovelier could be imagined’. Like myriad others after him, Polo was wowed by its whiteness, translucency and smooth, glass-like surface.

Porcelain acquired the nickname ‘white gold’ among covetous Europeans, who knew of no ceramic like it. For centuries, the Chinese kept their method of production a secret, prompting all sorts of speculation as to what it was made of. According to Gaspar da Cruz, a Portuguese friar writing in 1569, ideas ranged from oyster-shells to ‘dung rotten for a long time’. (We know now that porcelain is produced by mixing — and then firing at high temperatures — a clay called kaolin and a stone called petuntse.)

Foreign demand grew so great that Chinese potters began producing objects specifically for customers abroad. This is known as export porcelain, and one of the world’s most important private collections of it went on permanent public display earlier this year at the Albuquerque Foundation, outside Lisbon.

‘With a collection this special, it seemed to me almost perverse to keep it hidden,’ says Mariana Teixeira de Carvalho, co-founder of the foundation and chair of its board. ‘My grandfather had a different outlook, though. He is averse to publicity, and was always low-key about his collection, not thinking it would be of interest to anyone other than himself. He really had to have his arm twisted to get where we are today.’

Teixeira de Carvalho’s grandfather is Renato de Albuquerque, a one-time civil engineer and construction entrepreneur. He turns 98 this month and is the foundation’s other founder. Parallel to his professional career, he developed a passion for acquiring ceramics, and has over the decades amassed a collection of 2,600 works — with a focus on Chinese export porcelain from the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties.

Albuquerque, like his granddaughter, was born and raised in Brazil. Business interests increasingly took him to Portugal in the 1980s, however, and he came to buy an 18th-century quinta (estate) there, near the hillside town of Sintra, as a holiday home for himself and his family.

Fast-forward to today, and — after a recent conversion project carried out by the architecture firm Bernardes Arquitetura — the quinta is home to the Albuquerque Foundation.

‘I used to spend summers and Christmases here, so the place has emotional resonance for me,’ says Teixeira de Carvalho. ‘But it’s serving a bigger purpose now.’

Portugal seems an apt choice of location for Albuquerque’s collection. Globalisation, it might be said, began with the international maritime expeditions of the Portuguese in the 15th and 16th centuries, known as the Age of Discovery. In the specific case of China, the explorer Jorge Alvares is credited with being the first European to reach it by sea — in 1513 — with porcelain, tea and spices among the prime commodities that flowed west thereafter, via newly established shipping routes. (Marco Polo had reached China after a very slow journey by land.)

The term ‘First Orders’ is used to describe the earliest pieces of export porcelain. These were commissioned by the Portuguese, and Albuquerque owns 34 of the roughly 150 examples that survive. Typically, they were blue-and-white wares, decorated with the coat of arms of the aristocratic family, religious order or monarch for whom they were destined. Five works in the collection bear the emblem associated with King Manuel I: the armillary sphere.

The quinta’s old house now boasts a library filled with books on ceramics; a café with a terrace overlooking the garden; a shop selling works by contemporary Portuguese ceramicists; and bedrooms for use by anyone invited to undertake a residency (more on which below).

For the display of Albuquerque’s collection, a new building has been constructed to the side of the house. It is located mostly underground: visitors enter under a large, kite-shaped canopy at ground level, before descending a spiral staircase into an evocatively lit, wood-lined gallery space.

A selection of 250 objects from the Albuquerque collection is currently on view, in a long-term display called Connections: Works from the Albuquerque Collection. The title reflects the broad story being told: that of the rapid growth of global trade, and the exchange of ideas between people of different continents, in the period under consideration.

Witness, for example, the Ming dynasty kendi in the shape of a crescent, one of the symbols of Islam: this drinking vessel was likely exported to a Muslim community in south-east Asia (probably Indonesia).

There’s also a First Order bottle representing the Passion, the death and the resurrection of Christ, seemingly made for a Portuguese client with the purpose of containing holy oil.

It’s worth mentioning, too, the handful of tureens on show, which take a variety of forms, from a crab, a cockerel and a carp to a laughing Buddha. The tureen, a covered serving dish for soups and stews, was developed in France in the late 17th century, and its use soon spread across European high society, prompting demand for examples in porcelain from China.

The overall sense one gets from walking around Connections is of Chinese potters having produced ever more elaborate objects — as decades passed — in response to ever more elaborate requests from European clientele. The clients provided the potters with drawings, prints and sometimes even prototypes for adaptation into porcelain.

The Albuquerque collection duly contains a pair of tulip vases from around 1700, which probably ended up on a table in the Netherlands, and a stunning famille rose vase from later in the 18th century, decorated with a scene copied from William Hogarth’s painting O the Roast Beef of Old England (‘The Gate of Calais’). Like most export porcelain, these items would have been specially commissioned rather than produced on spec.

‘It took a long time for anyone in our family to realise what a treasure my grandfather’s collection was,’ says Teixeira de Carvalho. She herself started out as a human rights lawyer, before transitioning into the art world — at first, on the contemporary side, as a director of Michael Werner Gallery in London.

Over time, she also started accompanying Albuquerque to auctions and fairs. She cites 2016 as a crucial year in the evolution of the collection: it was then that 60 works from it were shown in an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

‘Not unconnected to [the staging of] that show, 2016 was also when the idea of the Albuquerque Foundation was first proposed,’ she says. ‘We understood we were dealing with a huge cultural asset, and it seemed right to allow the public a permanent space in which to see it.’

Construction began in 2021. Along with the buildings already mentioned, Bernardes Arquitetura was entrusted with designing a pavilion at the bottom of the garden. This is used to host temporary exhibitions by contemporary figures working in ceramics — currently the Danish artist Nina Beier (following on from Theaster Gates, who had the inaugural show).

‘Ceramics has been thriving in recent years,’ says Teixeira de Carvalho. ‘Our hope is for the foundation to reflect that trend — and celebrate the medium at large. Yes, primarily we want a setting which honours the collection, but we also want to keep that collection oxygenated… creating a place which feels fresh rather than static, and which people keep coming back to.’

To that end, there are plans, within a few years, to create a sculpture garden and to expand a fledgling residency programme for artists, curators and writers whose practice connects to ceramics. (After Beier’s exhibition, the pavilion will host a show by the British artist Phoebe Collings-James, featuring work she produced during a residency this autumn.)

‘We’re also hoping to benefit from the fact that Lisbon’s art scene, like the city as a whole, has lots of energy right now,’ says Teixeira de Carvalho. ‘Many people from across the world are settling in and around Lisbon — artists included — and the foundation hopes both to tap into that buzz and contribute to it.’ The venue is about half an hour from the Portuguese capital, and can be reached by road or by taking a train to Sintra followed by a short taxi ride.

More than 60 years have passed since Albuquerque made his first acquisitions: to wit, a few pieces of Meissen — a type of porcelain introduced to him by German business associates in Brazil in the 1960s. (Famed factories at Meissen in Germany and Sèvres in France were established in the 18th century after Europeans finally discovered how Chinese porcelain was made.)

Albuquerque still buys the occasional work today. However, the collection will extend no further after he is gone. As for the foundation, it has been funded, to date, entirely by the family. Teixeira de Carvalho says she will look for outside support as ambitions for it grow. Some of those ambitions have been discussed above; others include the introduction of a thoroughgoing education programme.

Around 20,000 people have visited the venue since it opened this spring. In a short space of time, the Albuquerque Foundation is already making connections.

Connections: Works from the Albuquerque Collection continues until 30 August 2026. Nina Beier: Goods runs until 4 January 2026

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