Anything goes…

The latest disgrace for a region that used to be the picture postcard equivalent of Postman Pat’s Greendales, took place last weekend at the picturesque «Olaria Pequena» - a former farmhouse converted into a ceramics studio on the EN125.

More than 50 hand-crafted items of pottery were whipped off the shelves while an employee was working with a compressor in a back room. It was around 4pm on a Sunday afternoon.

Owner Ian Fitzpatrick, 55 – who doesn’t normally open for business on Sundays – had only just popped out. “We had some work to do, so I thought: Let’s open the doors, in case anyone is passing by…”

He never imagined “for a minute” that the wrong sort of people might be passing by.

“I’ve been here for 29 years… this kind of thing simply doesn’t – or didn’t use to – happen! I mean, stealing from a pottery – it just doesn’t make sense.”

Price tags on the ceramics stolen ranged from €20 to €300 – but as the potter explained, “the thieves will be struggling if they try to sell them for those prices. It’s one thing to buy direct from the potter, in a gallery situation – completely different from buying from a market stall…”

Indeed, the items all carry the distinctive «Olaria Pequena» logo – and they’re very much in the style of the Glaswegian artist’s designs: bold, contemporary, demonstrating a fresh way of representing very local themes.

“The police have been fantastic,” he told us. “They even sent specialists down to analyze one of the pieces the thieves left dropped on the floor for fingerprints.”

A sign of the times? “Well, at least there was no violence…”

True, to make the millenium leap from Greendales to Wild West, one would need a little violence… but we’ve already had that further East recently, with violent robberies from houses and villas in the Loulé area – not to mention the sorry story of a drug dealer recently relieved of a number of non-vital body parts (including one testicle!), also in the Loulé area.

No, «Olaria Pequena» was just lucky there was no violence… Times have well and truly changed, and unfortunately the Algarve is not immune.

Anyone with any information on the missing pieces, should get in touch with Ian Fitzpatrick on info@olariapequena.com. Or visit the website http://www.olariapequena.com