The Municipality of Paços de Ferreira has been known for the last 20 years as the Capital of Furniture in Portugal. It has already received the 1st International Biennial of Furniture Design.
Paços de Ferreira is now the biggest business-oriented furniture centre of the country and Galicia, here being the market for a great part of the national furniture production.
With an installed exhibition area of about 1 million m2, Paços de Ferreira is the furniture sector's motor in Portugal, also relying on an important industrial activity at production level.
The Portuguese Institute for Foreign Commerce considers that the furniture industry is the one that has contributed the most to balance the exports and refrain the commercial crisis.
The path of History
In Paços de Ferreira the industry has stemmed from the embryo of school furniture.
The goal of a notable local inhabitant, Albino de Matos, was to introduce in Portugal a special education method, starting with school furniture, replacing what he considered inappropriate and anti-hygienic furniture for new revolutionary models, with hygienic and pedagogical rules as a priority.
An elementary school teacher and eminent pedagogue, he patriotically revolutionized all public and private educational establishments when he decided to spread this method in kindergartens, elementary and high schools in Portugal in 1920.
Later, the Dons de Froebel came, the counters, the metric boxes popularized under the name of "Albino de Matos", all the solids and several measure collections necessary for teaching geometry, the articulated meter and the useful games for children, scrupulously made according to the system of the great teacher who invented them.
Thus Albino Matos, Sucrs, Lda. appears in Freamunde, and three years were enough for the solution to the increasing orders to become merging with another industry also from Freamunde, Pereira & Barros, Lda.
From this union the designation Albino of Matos, Pereiras & Barros, Lda. was born as the first industry installed in the Municipality de Paços de Ferreira, pioneer of the carpentry industry, building perfect school furniture, creating in its installations a true training school for specialized labourers and technicians, many of which would come to establish themselves and create a furniture company network, turning into the current Capital of Furniture the Municipality of greatest impact in the national furniture industry.
