The Three Cultures Foundation offers a conference on Alfonso X 'Pottery and the earthenware trades in late medieval Seville'
The Three Cultures Foundation of the Mediterranean and the Machado Foundation will develop a programme of activities centred on the figure of Alfonso X 'The Wise' to coincide with the 8th centenary of his birth.
This is a joint initiative of both institutions to study this legacy in depth from different areas (from the historical to the artistic, including heritage, legal and even the customs of his time that have survived to the present day), taking into account the enormous importance of the monarch.
Issues such as these will be analysed in much greater detail in a series of lectures under the scientific coordination of Antonio Zoido, president of the Machado Foundation.
The series will resume after the summer break with three more conferences, from September to November, which will deal with such interesting topics as the birth of Hispanic lyric poetry, the European roots and branches of Alfonso X and the genesis of popular arts.
Thursday 15 September, 19.00h. 'Ceramics and the earthenware trades in late medieval Seville', by Pilar Lafuente Ibáñez, archaeologist and specialist in ceramics and material culture.
The earthenware trades were of great importance in late medieval Seville. The Christian conquest in 1248 marked a break with the important pottery activity of the Almohad period, but production soon recovered and all kinds of articles were produced in Seville's potteries and workshops: objects for domestic use, crockery of different qualities, commercial containers and jars for transport and storage, tiles, construction materials... all necessary and highly demanded products in an expanding city that saw its urban fabric being transformed while at the same time projecting itself abroad through important trade routes. Seville's pottery and ceramics tradition, which has survived to the present day, is well worth a look back into the past, to centuries in which the clay trades represented an important economic and commercial activity for the city.
Admission is free with prior registration on the Three Cultures Foundation website.
Pilar Lafuente Ibáñez is an archaeologist, specialist in ceramics and material culture, with a degree in Geography and History. Her research is based on the study of materials in different archaeological interventions and projects, such as restoration projects and archaeological excavations of interest in Seville and the province of Seville.
She has also participated as a lecturer in different courses and master's degrees, congresses, seminars and conferences, as well as in the research group HUM 712: Los almohades, su patrimonio histórico en Andalucía Occidental, at the University of Seville.
Her most recent collective publications include 'La Sevilla "abbādí" en B. Sarr (ed.) Tawā'if. Historia y Arqueología de los reinos de taifas (11th century)' and 'La historia del patio de San Laureano de Sevilla a través de las excavaciones arqueológicas (2002-2007)'.
