The Hard Life explores the effect that generations of trial and error, individual craftsmanship and an instinct to carve out the essential with the slenderest of means, brought to the tools which made life both liveable and meaningful to a pre-industrial society. It poses the questions, by what means did so much beauty and ingenuity arrive in articles of everyday rural life in Portugal? How did the shape of these objects balance necessity and formal perfection so skilfully? The objects may be appreciated both for their beauty and for the example they set of design at its purest.
