The town of Buño is known all over Galicia for its traditional pottery. The people of Buño may have engaged in this activity as far back as prehistoric times, when the first settlers in the area around Couto dos Barreiros discovered the rich deposit of clay that would allow them to make pottery.
The inhabitants of the nearby fortified settlements would certainly have used the raw material to make household utensils and, once they abandoned those places, they could have been the founders of the original Buño at the foot of Couto dos Barreiros, where today the Cruceiro das Cabras calvary and the parish church of Santo Estevo (dedicated to Saint Stephen) stand.
Later, the settlement moved to a higher, sunnier site, where the Santa Catalina hermitage (dedicated to Saint Catherine) and hospital were, creating the present-day town of Buño. Its inhabitants continued to engage in pottery, which was documented for the first time in the second half of the 16th century.
Over the years the number of potters increased and the population of the town grew. In the mid-18th century, there were 77 potters working in 63 workshops, when the population of Buño was around 500 people. Pottery continued to increase in the following century and into mid-20th century, when it began to die out due to the arrival on the market of industrially produced housewares.
The products of the artisan potters of Buño were sold at the open-air markets and in the market halls of the district and Galicia in general. They were distributed by muleteers from the Terra do Xallas region, called xalleiros. There is also evidence that pottery from Buño was exported by sea. Father Sarmiento noted that sailors from Moureira (Pontevedra) came to Buño to buy pottery, which they shipped out from the port of Ponteceso.
The pieces were thrown on a wheel and then fired in the communal kilns in the different neighbourhoods of the town. Communal work was needed to prepare the kilns very carefully and ensure that the batches were not ruined.
Recent social and economic changes have forced potters to use new designs and formats, intended to be decorative rather than functional, and to organise themselves into the Buño Pottery Association, which defends the profession and schedules the Mostra de Olería, or Pottery Show, that has been held in the town in the first two weeks in August since 1983. At the show, visitors have the opportunity to see a wide-ranging display of local pottery and to attend a varied programme of cultural activities linked with the event. During the rest of the year, it is possible to visit the Forno do Forte ethnographic complex, restored as a museum by the A Coruña provincial government and see how the potters lived in the 1950s.
